You picked a date, you have a venue, you booked the band, the catering is going to be delicious, but...oh no! You haven’t even thought about your first dance! Before you even think about dance lessons for your big wedding dance moment, you need to sit down and make some (more) decisions with your partner first. We made an easy-to-follow checklist to take at least one thing off your plate…
Choreography vs Social Dancing
How do you imagine your first dance? Are you looking for specific choreography so you can have a rehearsed performance? Or, would you like to learn the basics of social dancing in a particular style so you can improvise and have a unique experience for you, your partner, and your guests on your wedding day? Whatever you decide, it’s best to estimate at least 2 hours of lessons for 1 minute of music/choreography.
How Much Dance Experience Do You Have?
Are you a trained ballerina? Maybe your partner was a competitive ballroom dancer as a kid…? The more dance lessons (in any style) you have taken in the past, the easier it will be to learn (and practice!) your first dance. Also consider what type of dance experience you have- most likely your first dance at your wedding will be a partner dance, which is its own art! Think about your partnering experience as well as your partner’s as you’re calculating how many dance lessons to take before your wedding. If you have zero partnering experience, you’ll need to account for the time it will take to learn the basic rules of leading/following and practice time with your partner.
How Many Dance Styles are in Your Ideal First Dance?
Are you dancing to one song only? Or do you have dreams of a mashup of your top 5 favorite songs? Learning one dance style with its basic steps, some figures, drops and poses is easier than learning multiple styles if you are doing a medley of songs. The more styles, the more complicated the choreography- you’ll have more things to memorize and more concepts to understand if you want your first dance mashup to look as amazing as it does in your imagination.
Lifts and Tricks
As you can imagine, lifts and tricks need time. But they’re also major crowd pleasers! Safety is the most important part of all lifts and tricks, so you need to plan for enough time to really learn and master the technique of any tricks you want to put in your first dance. If you miss a step while you’re dancing, you can just keep going, but if you miss something while doing a trick one of you could really get hurt. There are plenty of simple (but impressive!) lifts and tricks to choose from, but just keep in mind that even the simplest ones do take time to perfect. So, if you have lifts and tricks on your list for your first dance, definitely plan to add a few classes and some extra practice time. And keep in mind, all the hard work will definitely pay off- the lifts and tricks will be the most impressive part of your first dance for your guests!
Once you’ve had time to go through this list with your partner and brainstorm what you want your first dance to look like, we’d love to chat! Schedule a free consultation and you can ask any questions that may have come up, and get help deciding on a song or a theme and we can move on from there!