How to Have the Perfect First Dance

When I was a little girl, I had images of myself and my husband doing a beautiful waltz as our first dance for our wedding.  Unfortunately, as the date of our wedding started to get closer I was reminded that my husband-to-be had two left feet and had never danced in his life. My aspirations of a vienze waltz worthy of the strictly final flew out the window.

However, Michael knew how important dance was to me and suggested that we did a surprise Charleston dance as our first dance as our guests would never suspect it. I was already taking on  huge craft project by making all the decorations and stationary for the wedding, I was not sure that I also had time to teach him to dance. 

To help Mike get the basic moves mastered, I put him in the trusty hands of Elena and Fiona and he attended the beginners Charleston course with MyCharleston. He quickly realised why I love the Charleston so much and I was impressed with how quickly he picked up the moves.

I caught him practising his Charleston everywhere, while doing the washing up, in the garden, brushing his teeth, you name it he was charlestoning. Not only did he perfect the basic Charleston, he was also doing the 1930s Charleston too! 

We practised in our living room, which at the time was filled with craft projects for the wedding, so we didn’t have much space. When it was sunny, we pracised in the garden, and our neighbours must have thought we were crazy.  Rehearsing together was so much fun, and was easily one of my favourite parts of wedding planning. We laughed so much and it was a great way to de-stress from all the difficult parts of wedding planning.

As the wedding drew closer, Mike started to get a bit nervous but I knew he was going to be great. The only people that knew about the first dance were the girls from Savoy Kicks, MyCharleston's dance troupe and I was so pleased that we had managed to keep it secret. 

Our first dance was one of our favourite parts of the wedding. The Charleston is the a perfect dance for us as it is silly and fun, and we just had such a great time performing it. Our guests were so surprised and they were all cheering and clapping the whole way through. As soon as we started Charlestoning, I could hear my sister scream, it was lovely to see our guests so happy.  When we did the lift in the middle of the routine, our friends and family all went wild.

We did our Charleston dance to ‘Yes sir that’s my baby’ by Firehouse Five plus two as this was the music that Mike first saw me perform with Savoy Kicks. Before the Charleston, we danced to a cover of The Book of Love by Airborne Toxic Event. Mike introduced me to the band when we first got together, and this song means so much to us.

After our first dance, my friends who run the company MyCharleston got all our guests on the dance floor and taught them how to Charleston. It was incredible to see all the people we love all doing the Charleston together. It was a great way to kick off our evening celebrations. No one could use the excuse that they could not dance to avoid joining in, as if Mike could do it. Anyone could do it.