A Bride...Again: Two More Special Dances…

After having our first dance as man and wife, it was time for the Father-Daughter dance. In reality, I wasn’t really sure that this was something that my Dad really wanted to do. I’m not being mean by saying that, just honest. I mean, this wasn’t my first wedding (as he kept reminding me), so I wasn’t sure if he’d want to do all the things that he didn’t do the last time…and I had to just swallow my pride and ask him about it. And don’t you know that when I did that, he acted like he’d never been anything but supportive of the idea for us to have a big wedding and of course he wanted to do a Father-Daughter dance with me.

We could have easily have left it out, but I’m really glad that we did it. There was no Mother-Son dance, so it wouldn’t have been that odd if we’d left this one out…but like I said, I’m glad that he wanted to do this tradition this time around with me. I know my Dad well, and knew that he would really only be comfortable doing a waltz. With that in mind, I selected Natalie Cole’s version of “Unforgettable” as it’s one of our favorite songs and a great song to waltz to.

Except that when we took the floor and the music began playing, there was another song playing at the same time. Right now, six months after the fact, I can’t recall what the other song was. But basically the problem was that we had given the DJ a burned CD for the songs that we wanted played that weren’t already in their library of songs…and of course, our First Dance song wasn’t in their library. So she had just played the Black Keys song off of the CD and then was switching to her library of music for the Natalie Cole song…but somehow the CD wouldn’t stop playing. It wasn’t really a big deal, other than there we were, my Dad and I just standing out in the middle of this dance floor waiting…and waiting…and waiting.

Of course, I made good use of the time and reminded my Dad (repeatedly over and over) that I couldn’t go backwards like normal in our waltz. With my bustle, the dress was up off of the floor, but just barely and I was really concerned about tripping and falling flat on my face. Call me Grace…but if it was going to happen to someone on their wedding day, it would be me!

Luckily, the music finally started and we moved into our motions. Without me going backwards. But leading me in the wrong direction kind of threw my Dad off a bit and we ended up doing a cross between a waltz and a two-step…it was cute though and no one but us could probably tell. But apparently we don’t take good pictures together, as this was the only really decent picture of the two of us dancing…

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great picture of the two of us – the joy and laughter on my Dad’s face is just priceless. I just wish that we hadn’t been making such awful faces through the rest of the pictures!

After that song ended, I got a small surprise. J came up to me and asked if it was her turn to dance with me now. I have to tell you that I nearly cried. If I had though ahead to plan this out, I couldn’t have done it better, but honestly it never crossed my mind that she would want a dance all on her own with me. Silly mommy! I quickly caught the DJ’s eye and requested what at the time was “our song” – Taylor Swift’s “Love Song.” We played this CD out in my car – at top volume and to this day, she still requests it on random days.

I’ll let the pictures show you this special, unplanned dance…