The Brides Guide to All Things Wedding Dances
This blog is for all brides and grooms to be, and covers everything from how to decide what dance to do, choosing music, finding a dance studio along with tips and tricks for enjoying your first dance.
Well, the stress and worry of your first lesson is behind you and hopefully you had a great time and came away thinking “we can do this!!”. Here’s what to expect on your follow up lessons.
Your first lesson will give your instructor a good idea of how you like to learn and what kind of steps you are comfortable dancing, by your second lesson they will have new steps for you to learn or the basic framework of your choreography depending on how many lessons you are taking.
In terms of learning, you can expect:
- Lesson One and Two
- An introduction to the concepts and steps you will need to master
- There will be plenty of opportunities for repetition to create “muscle memory” around those moves and steps
- Lesson Three
- We put it all together so you have a sequence of steps you can dance comfortably
- If you are dancing a choreographed routine, putting it together could take 2 or 3 lessons
- Lesson Four
- Here we focus on the finishing touches, like a dip, special ending and walk on
- This lesson is also about practise and repetition, so you can relax and enjoy your dance
- If you are dancing a choreographed routine or going for a Natural and Polished approach, this stage can take 3 or 4 lessons
- Practising
- It’s up to you, but it’s a good idea to do some practising (but not too much)
- Get your instructor to take a video of themselves (or you) dancing the steps so you have a handy prompt on your phone and can check you are dancing steps correctly
- Be careful of over practising because, as your dance can becomes second nature it’s easy for your mind to wander and you may start making mistakes
- This is where your instructor will introduce something fun to keep you preoccupied and get your brain back into gear!
Somewhere along the line you will probably run head first into what we call “The Curve of Learning”. This is a well know phenomenon in any kind of learning where you suddenly start to feel frustrated and think “I’ll never get this” or, “why can’t I remember the steps”…
Relax, it’s totally normal. It happens because when we start to learn we take in a lot of information quickly and usually progress very fast, but your brain needs time to process all that information and wham, you start forgetting stuff and feel you are getting nowhere. The good news, it only lasts for a lesson and you’ll be back, better than ever, in no time.
It’s also worth mentioning that if you are feeling tired or have had a stressful day, that can also affect your learning, so go with the flow, be supportive of each other and before you know it, you’ll be ready for your big day.
Next Blog we’ll cover, tips for enjoying your first dance together on the big day!!
For more information catch up with our previous blogs and find out more at here or check out our Instagram page
My name is Dani Bliss and I’ve been choreographing and teaching couples their wedding dances for over 15 years. In 2019 I got married and experienced the wedding dance from a whole new perspective.
