Can You Feel the Love Tonight: Gotta Dance!

Honestly, our first dance was not all I had hoped for.  I had this whole grand plan in which we would have a choreographed dance to "Bohemian Rhapsody" with props and everything.  I had half of it choreographed when Daniel backed out.  Though I've been dancing since the age of three, he is much less comfortable, and doing the whole big number was too much.

Can't argue with that.  I was disappointed, but I certainly wasn't going to blame him for being nervous.

But I had pictured at least doing some simple dance moves.  We've done that before.  At Andrew and Nicole's wedding, we helped open the first dance with a waltz, so we do know a little bit about couple dancing.

Nevertheless, when the time came, Daniel said he wanted this dance to be just for us.  Well, honestly, it ended up being more for him than for us.  We mostly did the sway thing, ironically because we danced much more effectively later.  I knew he'd be upset if I didn't let him lead, so I went with it, but I was disappointed that it wasn't a more lively dance, especially considering what I had originally envisioned.

We should have talked about it.  We probably should have practiced too.  I thought about doing so briefly, but it did not occur to me that our dance would be quite so blah.  But oh well, can't do anything about it now.

We still had a good time with it.  After incorporating Lion King and Indiana Jones songs into our wedding, I'm sure having "At Last" as our first dance song seems a queerly conventional choice.  However, it's the closest thing we have to "our song," so there really was nothing to be done about it.

Photos by Stephen Cheng except for the first which was taken by our friend Jorge.

The rest of the night's dancing was much more agreeable for me.  I literally danced to every song.  There were a few times that I tried to go sit down (like to eat our glorious cake and desserts), but since we had done the song list ourselves (and had to cut out all of the remaining fluff and then some due to time constraints), I loved all the songs and just could not let them go by undanced.

Rocking out with My Mom

Daniel and I danced together enough to be satisfactory to both of us, but I spent most of the time dancing with my friends.  Before, I was afraid Daniel would abandon me, and I wouldn't get to dance enough, but I hadn't thought about the fact that pretty much everyone I knew was going to be there.  And the Bride ain't exactly hard to spot.  It didn't matter that Daniel and I danced together probably less than half the time because I had my friends.

And oh the things I made them do!  I had forced a number of group dances into the playlist, including the "Macarena," "YMCA," and the "Cha Cha Slide."  I still don't really understand why Daniel dislikes the "Cha Cha Slide," but I'm glad we put them all in because those were the songs that got EVERYONE onto the dance floor (and by everyone, I mean the cool people...a group my husband cannot claim to be part of).

The "Macarena" was hilarious.  I got out in front of everyone, facing them, and lead the whole thing.  It was weird, but it was kind of cool too, even if the song did go on for way too long.

There was one dance in which literally everyone participated:  the Hora.  For those of you who do not exclusively date Jews, the Hora is a traditional Jewish dance performed at big events like weddings and bar/bat mitzvahs.  Basically, all you need to know about it is that I got lifted up in a chair.  Daniel wanted his aunts to teach everyone how to do the dance before we started, but they didn't quite get the message (they probably should have talked about that ahead of time too) and just started doing it, so we all just sort of caught on.  Oh, and did I mention I got lifted up in a chair?

We did it a little differently, but his will give you the basic idea:

 "OK, don't drop me now!"

 "No, seriously, no dropping the Nicole!"

 "OK, I think I'm safe.  Hey, this is fun!"

 Take a gander at Daniel's uncle's face.  Apparently, he needs to go to more Jewish weddings, get in a bit of exercise.

 My mom was hilarious the whole time she was up in that chair.  She's such a ham!  We got AMAZING pictures of her and Daniel's dad.

The Hora was a ton of fun, and I'm really glad we got to include it in our wedding.

On the other end of the spectrum was the father/daughter dance.  While it was just the two of us, it was deeply meaningful to me, especially because my dad does not dance.  I've known what song I wanted to use for YEARS, and it's definitely a heart-wrencher.  I thought for sure one of us would cry, but we didn't.  Still, you can tell from the pictures that it meant a lot to both of us.

 I didn't want to put my dad through five whole minutes of dancing just the two of us, so we had my mom and Daniel join in about halfway through.  I made sure a number of times that Daniel was OK with this since his mom wasn't there, but he assured me he was, and he and my mom seem to have a grand old time.

My dad and I have never really communicated as well as my mom and I.  We still have a really good relationship, but my mom was always the one who asked all the questions while my dad hesitated to make me repeat everything.  Plus, he was gone a lot when I was growing up, and there's always been a slight (slight) tension between us because of it.  Though he never exactly said anything, I know he felt a little bit like he was losing me as the wedding approached, and I'm glad we had the dance to sort of visually confirm that our love for each other wasn't going anywhere just because I was getting married.

There was one more dance of significance that night, and it was quite an accident that it became noteworthy.  My Maid of Honor and I had not planned on performing a duet.  I should explain.  Seema's family had a lot of massive Indian parties when we were in high school that I attended.  I LOVED them!  Indian parties kick American parties in their oversized booties.  Anyway.  There was one song that they always played from some Bollywood film that I especially enjoyed, and I wanted to include it in the wedding.  Naturally, I expected some people to be hesitant to dance to a song that they not only had never heard but also was sung in a language they could not understand.  However, I did not anticipate that EVERYONE would be too chicken to get out there.

So Seema and I ended up dancing the entire song by ourselves.  And it is not a short song.  Now, I don't really know what I'm doing when it comes to Indian dance.  I know a couple of moves, particularly for this song, that I picked up at parties, but that's all.  However, I have been dancing for 13 years, so I catch on quickly.  Seema on the other hand has done multiple types of Indian dancing professionally.  So as the song was playing, I pretty much copied everything she did.  The result was that almost everyone at the wedding thought we had choreographed the dance and planned on performing it as a duet.

Woops.

This was absolutely the most pleasant surprise of the evening.  After we finished, everyone came and asked how long we had been practicing.  My response?  "Well, we started dancing five minutes ago, so...."

Daniel's aunt happened to get it on video, so you can decide for yourself whether it looks like we planned it or not.

http://www2.snapfish.com/snapfish/slideshow/AlbumID=7044279009/PictureID=368463273009/a=3626415023_75475509/otsc=SHR/otsi=SPIClink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

P.S.  Doing this dance in that dress was NOT EASY!

If you're curious, this is what the official dance looks like:

It was a great moment for my best friend and me.  Plus, getting more multicultural stuff in is always fun.

And that about wraps up dancing for the evening.  I know, I know, you can't wait for more, how could I make this post so short?  Yeah, dancing is awesome.  I had SO MUCH FUN with all of the dancing we did that night.  Truly, my wedding was the best dance party I have ever been to.  I mean really, how could it not be when all of the music was tailored toward us AND everyone we love was dancing with us?

Was dancing important to your wedding?  Did you include any out of the ordinary songs?  Anyone else out there actually like the "Macarena?"

Hey Mr. DJ

Music is most definitely the area in which we procrastinated most.  And by "we," I mean Daniel.  This was his big job, and though I offered to take more of a leading role after what happened with his mom, he wanted to do it himself.

And so it was that we were still working on it on the drive up to Tiburon the day before the wedding.

But we got it done, and it actually worked out quite well.

We didn't want to waste money on a DJ and knew we couldn't afford a band, so we decided to do the music ourselves, iPod-style.  This was one of the easiest ways to save money, and I definitely think it was worth it.

To put our dancing music together, we basically went through my iTunes and threw songs that we liked and would be good for dancing into a folder.  We consulted a few friends as well and added their contributions, and we bought a few songs that we knew we wanted.  After all of that, we had seven hours of dancing music.

We only had two-and-a-half hours of dancing time to fill, so the hard part became narrowing down the list.  Some songs were easy to throw out, mostly the ones that I had put in because I think they're funny and not because they are good for dancing.  Or listening to.  Especially for people who don't get the joke (for instance, Skullcrusher Mountain).

However, once we got down to four hours, it became harder to get rid of songs.  We tried to keep the ones that we both really liked or were good for dancing or one of us REALLY wanted to keep.  Still, we had to let go of some gems, like Once upon a Dream (what can I say, I'm Disney-obsessed), Do You Believe in Magic?, and Thriller (that was a tough one for me, especially since my dad promised to dance to it).

We tried to group songs into categories like fun songs, slow songs, contemporary songs (of which there were, like, three), older songs, and songs beloved by all.  We distributed as evenly as we could, taking into account lulls for cake cutting and serving dessert and such.

Finally, after many sacrifices and much redistributing, we got our list down to the bare minimum and in a good order.

And despite the fact that Daniel hadn't even started on the list until six days before the wedding, the music actually worked out really well.  Lots of people told us that they liked our list, and there was literally no time when the dance floor was empty.  I know because I danced to every single song we played.

I know it can be tough to think of songs sometimes, so I've posted our list below for your stealing pleasure.  This is the list we had before the night started mind you, and not all of these songs got played due to circumstances beyond our control.  But that's a story for another time.

Our Dancing Playlist:

At Last by Etta James (our first dance)
I Gotta Feeling by The Black Eyed Peas
Walking on Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves
Twist and Shout by The Beatles
Hava Nagila (aka The Hora for us gentile folk)
Beyond the Sea by Bobby Darin
Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison
Proud Mary by Tina Turner
Don't Stop Believing by Journey
When I Fall in Love by Nat King Cole
Butterfly Kisses by Bob Carlisle (father/daughter dance)
Y.M.C.A. by The Village People (I had to fight for this one.  It was awesome.)
Just Like Heaven by The Cure
Mambo #5 by Lou Bega
You Sexy Thing by Hot Chocolate
I Can't Help Myself by Four Tops
A Whole New World from Aladdin (I had to)
Fly Me to the Moon by Frank Sinatra
California Gurls by Katy Perry
Say "Shava Shava" from Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (Bollywood song, will explain later)
Livin' La Vida Loca by Ricky Martin
I Melt with You by Modern English
Anyone Else but You by The Moldy Peaches (very glad I fought for this one)
Jump in the Line by Harry Belafonte
Macarena by Los Del Rio (Shut up!  Everyone danced to it!)
I Love Rock and Roll by AC DC
Pon de Replay by Rihanna
I'm a Soul Man by James Brown
Can't Help Falling in Love by Elvis Presley
I Will Follow You into the Dark by Death Cab for Cutie
Old Time Rock and Roll by Bob Seger
Cha Cha Slide by Mr. C (had to fight for this too, and it was awesome as expected)
Lady Marmalade from Moulin Rouge
Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet
Tubthumping (I Get Knocked Down) by Chumbawamba
My Girl by The Temptations
Somewhere over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (while people left...or were supposed to)

As you can probably tell, I did a lot more fighting for my songs, songs that some might consider lame...because THEY are lame...*sticks tongue out*, than Daniel did, but I'm really glad we had some of those classic group dancing songs (like YMCA) because a ton of people danced to them.  AND a ton of older people danced to them.  I'm glad they were able to have fun too.

The only thing I would have done differently with our playlist is cut some of the longer songs.  "The Macarena" is a prime example of a song that was fun but did not need to be six minutes long.  This would have allowed us to keep more songs that we wanted but had to cut without sacrificing the long songs entirely.  Alas, we ran out of time.

Overall, this was one of the things that turned out well with limited effort.

How did you pick your music?  If you did a iPod wedding, did it work out for you?  Would you dance to the Macarena or YMCA?