Weddingbee Blog

In my last entry, you saw our first dance along with a little bit of our practice footage. I probably showed a total of 20 seconds of practice footage. Y’all… it certainly took longer than 20 seconds to learn how to dance. That’s for sure.

Here we are bustin’ a move.

Mr. Dolphin and I took private lessons at the Imperial Dance Studio here in Gainesville. We signed up for their wedding package, which included two hours of private lessons, along with two hours of private practice (in our own studio, by ourselves) for $140. Not bad in our book.

At our first lesson our instructor listened to our music and danced quietly around the room by herself, figuring out which type of dance style fit best with our music. After a few minutes of humming and moving around, she determined a fox trot would be perfect for our first dance song, I’m Yours by Jason Mraz featuring Colbie Calliet.

The first practice consisted of loud sighs by Mr. Dolphin, lots of stepping on toes, and a few “scenes” by Mr. Dolphin.

What I say Mr. Dolphin made a “scene,” I mean he had an all out tantrum. He got so frustrated during our first lesson that he laughed super loud and laid on the floor groaning. Yeah… he totally did this in front of me and our instructor. Soooo embarrassing.

While leaving our first lesson, Mr. Dolphin proclaimed that we would never get the dance down and that we should just go back to the trusty “slow swaying” motion for our first dance.

I, on the other hand, loved every minute of our practices. I smiled so much during all our practices that Mr. Dolphin had to tell me to STOP SMILING because it was distracting him. I grew up dancing, so being able to do something that I love with the person I love was so incredible for me. Plus, I love when Mr. Dolphin spins me.

I became so obsessed with being spun that I made everyone who danced with me (for the dollar dance at our wedding) spin me at the end. It was a requirement in my book.

Anyways, after a few lessons we were starting to get the hang of it. Every lesson added more complexity - a new move here, learning how to start and end our dance, etc. We tried to practice in between lessons, but that didn’t always work out so well as we really didn’t have a large enough space and Mr. Dolphin was against practicing in our driveway. Some nights, we would try moving all the furniture out of our living room. After running into a side table, stubbing our toes on the couch and tripping over a cord, we decided to leave the practicing to the dance studio.

When we did get to practice, we always recorded it to view later and see what we did wrong (helped make the most of our very few practices). Check out a little bloopers reel below!

First Dance Bloopers Reel from Mrs Gator on Vimeo.

Practices were fun, stressful, and eye-opening. We danced, we played, we made funny faces, we fought with each other, we laughed—we just had a good time.

As we neared our wedding, we both got more and more nervous about our first dance. We were more nervous about our first dance than we were for any other part of our wedding. We just wanted to get it right and show everyone what we had learned. Plus, we wanted to put on a show, because after all, we were the entertainment at the wedding. Har har.

As you saw in my first dance post, things went off without a hitch… OK, maybe there was a few hitches, and a big mess up that caused me to burst out laughing—giving us one of my favorite photos ever:

photo by Starks Photography

But, no one noticed our mess up (or at least they didn’t tell us!), and we pulled it off.

In the end I’m so incredibly happy we took dance lessons and I plan to encourage Mr. Dolphin to take lessons with me again, for fun. Well… I may have to blackmail him to get him in a dance studio again, but it shall be done! For me, taking dance lessons was the most fun I have had in so long and I can’t wait to do it again.

What was your favorite wedding activity? Was your FI a big part in making that wedding activity fun for you?