the last dance
first dance song recommendations and other wedding dance advice
Remember the very first time you ever slow danced with someone you had a crush on? My first experience slow dancing was at a "Trophy Dance" - an end-of-the-summer celebration and award ceremony put on by the pool and tennis club my family went to while I was growing up. I remember running away and hiding in the girls' bathroom after I danced with the boy I liked to "I Swear" by All for One. Although we were both only seven years old, it still felt like a monumental moment in my life.
Does the giant 200+ "greatest first dance songs" playlist that you stumbled across on the internet leave you feeling overwhelmed and confused? While many first dance song lists mean well, they often forget to consider the most important aspect of the first dance song - whether or not you can actually dance to it!
The following list encompasses 29 songs that real 2015 couples and students of First Dance Charlotte danced to on their wedding day. The list runs the gamut from Motown to R&B, Top 40 Hits to Country, well-known to unknown, and everything in between.
My article, Wedding dance lessons: boom or bust?, on the top 10 reasons why Charlotte brides and grooms should take wedding first dance lessons, was recently published on Charlotte Wedding magazine's Bride+Groom blog! Obviously, I think they are a boom, but check it out for yourself by clicking on the link above or the image below. Cheers!
Preparing for your first dance can be one of the most fun parts of the wedding planning process. During lessons, you get to spend uninterrupted time focusing on your partner, and during practice, you get to work through the challenges of learning something new together. It's not always easy to fit it in to your busy schedule, but practicing, when done intentionally and with a positive attitude, can result in major progress.
Here are a few tips for practicing at home in between wedding dance lessons.
Worrying about what you are going to do during your first dance can add a layer of stress to an already stressful wedding planning process. Taking lessons allows you and your significant other to spend time connecting without distractions or to-do lists, and eases the tension surrounding the first dance on your wedding day.
Spotify recently compiled a list of the top 10 wedding first dance songs of 2014 based on analysis of more than 30,000 wedding playlists in their database. I decided to take a closer listen to each of the top first dance songs and re-rank them based on a super-scientific rubric that I made up just for this occasion.
Oh, Christen and Ben. These long-time love birds came to me just a few short weeks before their wedding for two lessons of first dance preparation. Luckily, they were already pretty confident dancing together and just needed help pairing the right steps with the music.
They also brought me a challenge.
I know, I know. This song is old news. I can hardly believe how much time has passed (and how many artists have borrowed her sound) since Ingrid Michaelson first came onto the music scene. When this song came on my Pandora recently, I was reminded why her video for “The Way I Am” has more than 12 million views on YouTube.
I had the pleasure of working with Amy and Jim a few weeks before their May wedding. They chose the classic love song “All The Way” by Frank Sinatra for their first dance. I wasn’t very familiar with this song when we began our lessons; however, you can almost never go wrong with Frank and this song certainly does not disappoint. All The Way is a wonderful first dance song for a classic and classy wedding and I’m sure Amy and Jim looked as stunning and dapper on dance floor as a modern-day Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
