I have the pleasure of working with a wedding couple right now who are so dedicated to doing a Good Dance, they started six months in advance.
Because they were willing to put in so much work, they are going to be able to do some complicated choreography, to a challenging piece of music, and make it look great. So many wedding couples set up a lesson or two a couple of weeks before the event, and end up doing the hug-and-shuffle to one of the same-old, same-old songs.
Now, I know that the wedding dance is not that important to many (if not most) couples. It's just a couple of minutes out of the whole event, after all. But I think with dance on TV, and some of the dances that are popping up on YouTube, wedding couples are getting a little more ambitious.
Which is great, but listen up: it takes time to learn a choreographed routine. It takes more time to understand how to actually dance the routine. And it takes even more time to dance the routine to specific music in a way that's going to please you when you look at that video ten years from now.
Choosing music is something that I think gets overlooked. For people who aren't already dancers, choosing a piece of music just because it's "a wedding song" may be counterproductive. There are great, romantic, wedding-appropriate songs in every single genre of music. Latin, hip-hop, R&B, country, even hard rock - there are terrific songs that any creative teacher could use to design a wedding dance that the couple can really connect with.
So first, choose music you really love from a genre that you really enjoy, and second, plan ahead. If you want it to look decent, give yourselves six lessons. If you want it to look great, give yourselves twelve or more. Nothing about the wedding day should be a throwaway, and learning a dance can provide that hour or two a week for the couple to really concentrate on each other and remember why they are doing all this!
Comments