Weddingbee Blog

I’ve been searching for a while for the perfect father daughter dance song.

I love Cinderella, by Steven Curtis Chapman. It’s a really sweet song about a dad whose little girl is growing up. The song kind of emphasizes living in the moment and sharing one special last dance.

Read more…

Mr. Lace and I are huge fans of So You Think You Can Dance. Many of the dancers are so talented and able to dance so many different styles. Sometimes, I’ll watch and think to myself, ‘I’m not even sure which muscles to move to do that.’

I must live vicariously through them because I am NOT a dancer. I’ve got rhythm. I can hear a beat. But I have no spatial kinesthetic intelligence. I just don’t. I can do a couple of basic dance moves and do goofy moves, but let’s just be real here. I suck at dancing.

In addition to that, Mr. Lace is not the kind of guy who likes everyone looking at him. He doesn’t like to be in the spotlight (I realize this will be a bit of an issue come the wedding day).

So, when we were working through our schedule and got to first dance, we quickly skipped it and said we’d come back to it later.

I don’t want to make a fool of myself.
Read more…

Music. The easiest decision of our wedding. Actually, it’s something we decided on before we were even engaged. Contra dance!

Source

Those of you who haven’t spent much time in New England might not be too familiar with this form of dance. Picture square dancing in long lines where you switch partners all the time and every man you dance with tries to prove how macho he is by spinning you faster and faster. It’s so fun.
Read more…

Mr. Spaniel and I just got back from our first dance lesson. Why dance lessons, you ask? Are we going to rock the reception?

(An aside: aren’t they amazing?)

Well, not exactly. We actually are just learning a simple waltz—no mean feat, given my two left feet! (Nyuck nyuck nyuck.)

Incorporating my family’s wedding traditions has been pretty easy—I’ve been to Jewish and Pakistani weddings, and there are so many aspects of each that are highly visible, but also totally secular.
Read more…

I have Sirius XM radio in my car, and it’s the one thing that I can count on to get me through my long commute day after day. Well, that and being able to check Twitter at stoplights. (At stoplight, you hear me! I’m not Twittering and driving at the same time, yo. Consider that your Public Service Announcement for the day.) My radio presets include Alt Nation, The Coffee House, The Loft, and their ’80s and ’90s devoted stations. (What? I’m sure you know all the words to Ice, Ice Baby by heart, too.)

But there’s one station that I find myself flipping to more and more as the wedding draws near. XM – Love. That’s right, a station completely devoted (no pun intended) to love songs.

Source

It’s not that I’m in a lovey dovey mood more than usual; it’s that for the past six months or so Mr. FF and I have searched (in vain) for our first dance song. XM – Love actually isn’t helping very much, since they have “hits” by Celine Dion and Barry Manilow on heavy rotation. So why do I listen to it? I guess because I have a glimmer of hope that they’ll play something that fits Mr. FF’s and my “first dance standards”. (Please note: this glimmer is fading quickly.)
Read more…

Source

I only recently heard about brides and grooms having a private moment together for a last dance while all their guests are waiting to send them off, but I think it sounds so sweet!
Read more…

A couple of people asked on my last post about how the dance floor got so packed so quickly. I must say, the same thing happened at my younger brother’s wedding this summer - and didn’t happen at many of the other weddings we have attended. It seems that there are a few things that can make a difference.

1. The bride and groom must be happy.

If they are happy, it is much easier for everyone else to be happy.

2. The right music is crucial- and live music helps.

Of the three weddings we’ve attended with live music, 2 had tons of dancing. Of the DJ or iPod weddings, roughly 25% (2 of 8, I think) had a lot of dancing. Regardless of how the music is played, it should be music that everyone, from grandparents on down, should be able to tap their feet to. Our big band played standards from the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s; my brother and his wife had a funk band that played classics from the 1970s through today. But in each case, most people knew most of the songs.
Read more…

Last weekend, Mr. Sunbeam and I went for our first private dance lesson. When we handed over our music to our instructor, we still hadn’t chosen a song for our first dance. It’s a tall order for a song to be romantic, yet modern, yet everything you’d ever want it to be for your first dance. So we let the instructor listen to all three and he told us the recommended dance moves for each. Here were the contenders:

Lady’s House by Iron and Wine - Dance move: rumba

Read more…

This brings a whole new meaning to “dancing in the aisles”, don’t you think?

The Dude and I have known a couple things regarding our wedding reception from the beginning: 1) we want everyone to dance like crazy and have a great time, and 2) we don’t want to play “typical” wedding dance music. You know, the kind of music that middle-aged white people dance to? Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. The YMCA. Celebrate. The Hustle. Anything resembling ’80s hair metal. I know it gets people on the dance floor, but I Just. Can’t. Do it.

Instead, I’ve been trolling through our CD collection over the past few weeks, picking out some potential alternative dance song gems. My ultimate goal is a list of poppy, indie songs-with-a-beat, that are danceable enough so that people who have never heard them will want to get out there and boogie. Throw in a splash of Top 40 hip-hop (I like Kanye and T.I.), a classic Prince song or two, and some Electric Light Orchestra for the Dude, and we’ve got ourselves a party!

We can do our best to select cool music, but we can’t help it if people dance like this.

Read more…

I know I’m not the only one who was shaken up by yesterday’s news that Michael Jackson had suddenly passed away. I remember sneaking into my older brother’s closet when I was little and discovering his instructional booklet on how to moonwalk, which I thought was just about the coolest thing ever (that was before I discovered layering neon socks). Despite my love for M.J., I’ve always been a little bit terrified of the Thriller video, but this past Halloween I faced my fears (and dancing phobia) and learned part of the Thriller dance for our friend’s wedding. My friends and I persuaded the entire wedding party to surprise the happy couple with a dance routine, but once we actually started practicing in living rooms, the enthusiasm died down and we were left with only four of us (including Mr. Candy Corn, who so graciously volunteered to take on the role of Michael). I even found a Thriller-riffic jacket from Target that I styled with some black duct tape to add that extra touch to our “performance”. We had our friend and fellow bridal party member videotape the dance, but unfortunately he hit the wrong button and managed to leave us without any blackmail in the form of a YouTube video.

We practiced in the basement of the mansion one last time before heading to the tent and surprising everyone with our zombie moves. Right about now is when I was wishing we had invested in a fog machine to make us look a little less… uhm… sad.
Read more…

News flash… the Mascaras are not good dancers. I danced for seven years waaaay back when, but I definitely didn’t retain much and now I feel ridiculous trying to dance. Mr. M is just… not good either. We have this weird fear of doing the high school sway while everyone is watching us dance for the first time as Mr. and Mrs. I mean, it will be our first dance as a married couple, so it should be done right, don’t you think? We’ve been talking about getting lessons since we first got engaged, and we finally found a ballroom dance studio this past week. We had our introductory lesson and really enjoyed it!

We learned the very very basic steps of the rumba, foxtrot, waltz, and the hustle. We very quickly decided that we were not fans of the hustle. The rest were enjoyable, though. I kind of like using the whole floor in the foxtrot! Our instructor was a fun guy and was pretty outgoing, which is just what we needed to break out of our shells a bit (we are engineers, after all). He did a lot of the “BAM”, “BOOM”, “POW” business (apparently channeling his inner Black Eyed Peas?) but we’ll forgive him for that.

At the end of the lesson, while we definitely didn’t feel as though we were ready for the real deal, we at least had the confidence that we are capable of pulling it off.
Read more…

This past Thursday, Papa Frenchie and I went to our first dance lesson. Papa Frenchie didn’t really dance at his own wedding, so Mama Frenchie still can’t believe taking dance lessons was his idea. My job was to find the studio, and since I only knew of two in our area (Londance and Arthur Murray) I called the closest one, Londance. Pat (one of the owners) set us up with a free trial lesson to see how we liked everything and for us to decide if we’d want to take more lessons.

Photo by Me. Sorry it’s dark :-/

Papa Frenchie and I had NO CLUE what our song would be going into this lesson; we just figured we would pick something we could dance to.
Read more…

What a ridiculously hectic weekend!!! I baked the last batch of macarons, my sister flew in for my (last minute) bachelorette party, and we organized and assembled all the paper goods and items to take down to our venue. Oh yeah, we also squeezed in a dance lesson!

So, after reading Miss Yorkie’s post on her dance lessons, I panicked and realized that I had forgotten to schedule lessons. Well, at this stage in the game, that means one (singular) lesson. Ha!!

I pick up choreography and dance very quickly, because, well, I spent the better part of my life in ballet and jazz classes. The problem is, when Mr. P and I dance together, I usually lead… for example, I dip myself:

Read more…

Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Remember that last item on my list of things to do? Well, Mr. Yorkie and I have finally gotten around to doing something about it!

Despite my Cuban heritage, I was totally skipped over when it came to distribution of the rhythm gene. I’ve never felt comfortable out on the dance floor, and for that reason have always sat out on the sidelines at every wedding I’ve ever been to. My biggest fear since we got engaged has been that our first dance will look more like a scene from some middle school spring fling, with us standing in place, awkwardly shuffling our feet from side to side. (That’s the one move that I unfortunately have mastered!)
Read more…