There were so many things about this wedding that were out of my comfort zone- one of them was dancing. It’s funny, because our family is so musical- but somehow the music didn’t transfer into our bodies. When Paul told me we were going to have a “first dance” together, I knew we were in trouble.
On the Wednesday before the wedding, I was staying with my sister. Isabel was having her bachelorette party, so Paul asked if he could stay at my sister’s with me that night.
YES HE COULD!!! I was thrilled to have one last night with him. My sister lives about an hour away from Valparaiso, so we had a nice talk on the drive, then a nice dinner with my sister and brother-in-law. AND THEN… I grimly told Paul that we had to practice our dance.
We put on “Hello Goodbye” (the Beatles song, which Paul had chosen) and tried to make our way through it. When we finished Paul exclaimed “That was HORRIBLE” and I collapsed into laughter. As Paul explained it, “I’ve never danced with someone equally as bad as I am- I’ve always had someone better to lead the way.” Obviously we had some work to do.
Thank goodness we had my brother-in-law to help. He’s the type of person who’s up for anything- whether it’s singing, dancing, cooking, painting a sign, repairing a fence… he’s willing to do it all. He gave us some pointers- “you guys are stepping to far too the side, don’t pump your arms like that…” and we tried again. This time we were much better. But, we realized it would be super boring to do the same thing over and over again for the whole song, so we added in some rudimentary “choreography.”
Since we’re not skilled enough to do things like spins and dips, we practiced some silly things like…as the song started: “You say yes, I say no…” we swayed slowly back and forth… “I say stop, and you say go, go GO” on the third “go” we started dancing enthusiastically and animatedly. “You say high, I say low…” we put our arms up high, then low… you get the idea.
It’s pretty hard to “dance like no one’s watching” when in fact, there are 130 people watching you, but we did pretty well. We could hear people laughing at our attempts at choreography. Who knows what we actually looked like, but we enjoyed it.
Afterwards I realized that the other first dances- Isabel and Paul, and Isabel with her father- were slow and sentimental, while ours was more… jaunty. I can imagine people thinking “oh, they must have done that because that’s how they danced together when Paul was little.” No, that’s actually how we dance now, ha ha.
I had so much fun that I danced even more during the reception. Here’s another photo, which I love because my daughter is looking at me and laughing- possibly because she’s having fun or perhaps she thinks I look stupid (unfortunately, as usual I have to blur her face out!)
This was one of the many things about the wedding experience where I thought I couldn’t do something, but then realized that in fact, YES I CAN!
Do you like to dance? Are you good at it?
Top photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash
One Response
You danced and had fun! Excellent! Great song, BTW. The dress was a great choice of dress for dancing – looks so pretty and flowing.
I can’t dance; I have no rhythm. Anything you did would look like ballroom dancing compared to my lack of grace.