Finally onto the reception kick off...the entrances followed by the much dreaded first dance.
I'll give you a little background. J's a really good dancer. Her father taught her when she was younger and he even tried to teach me many years ago. Unfortunately nothing ever worked. I’m terribly uncoordinated and for some reason I try to take the lead and I just end up stepping on the other persons feet. J has tried numerous times over the years to teach me in the privacy of our own home but whenever she attempts to teach me I quickly nip it in the bud. Withing the first ten seconds I wrap my arms around her neck and kiss her until she makes the torture stop! So needless to say, it was a source of tremendous
stress for me before the big day.
And we didn't make it easy on ourselves either. Our song of choice was
With Me by Sum 41, a rather untraditional first dance song. I guess you could call it an alternative/punk ballad. Definitely not the easiest song to dance to. Especially once the guitar riffs kick in. But it's one of our favorite songs. And when we got married back in June on the beach it CT we had it playing in the
background. If we were going to do a first dance, it just had to be to that song.
So after much hemming and hawing we decided to go ahead and do a first dance. Even though the thought of stumbling around awkwardly while all of our guests watched terrified me, the thing that cause me even greater stress was what would our guests do??? Could they or would they want to dance to it? I knew that there was a good chance that 99.9% of our guests never would have heard the song before. What would happen if nobody joined us on the dance floor??? Can you say panic attack?!?! Maybe we should just pick a song that everyone knows and just make it a little easier on ourselves. But in the end we decided to go ahead with the Sum 41 song since it meant so much to us.
The funny thing is after all the stress I actually went into the dance feeling really good. We had practiced a bit before the wedding and I thought I had everything down pat. Nothing was going to stop me! Unfortunately we (I should probably say I) started of on the wrong foot (literally!) so we never really got into a good sway. You'll be able to see for yourselves when I post the video later. I beg you, please be gentle on me :)
The good news is that in the end I didn't really care because I was beyond ecstatic. Nothing, especially a few awkward steps, was gonna kill my mood!
Ok enough of that. Now let me get into how it all started. Our fabulous attendants kicking the night off right! The song we chose for the entrances was
Your Love Is My Love by Whitney Houston. Another one of our all-time favorites.
J's mother & brother
My parents
Our besties
Our nephews
Our nieces
My siblings bringin it!
One of the big surprises of the night. J's rather reserved sisters getting the party started!
Ta-dah! Our grand entrance!
Having way too much fun!
And then the dread sets in.....
But I focused soley on my bride...
and managed to make it through.
And much to our delight, our guests actually joined in!
My grandmother even took a twirl!
We made it...pure bliss!
Stay tuned for actual footage. I might regret doing that but I know you guys will be nice :)
All images: Daniel Krieger
My parents bustin a move
Me and Ally who couldn't have been more perfect. She brought a smile to everyone's face the entire night :)
Jen's grandmother giving us her gift. She made us a beautiful handmade pillow.
Ally and Court...one of her many partners of the night :)
Although you may not believe this from the looks of this picture, I can assure you that there were NO line dances at our wedding!
Next up: Next up the amazing toasts from both of our sisters.
