First first dance dance lesson

Dan and I just came back from our first "first dance" lesson! One of my aunts is a ballroom dancing instructor and my mom's been taking lessons with her for awhile, so we went over to my aunt's place tonight with my mom for our first hour-long lesson. We're practicing to the acoustic version of "Ever the Same" and learning a series of foxtrot steps (slow, slow, quick quick):

1. Two basic steps
2. One quarter turn
3. One promenade
4. One spin
5. One diagonal weight shift thing
6. Two quarter turns
7. Two karaoke step things
8. One arm swaying thing across two sets of four beats
9. One quarter turn
10. Repeat from beginning.

It was really fun! I've always liked taking dance lessons and had Chinese folk dance as my cultural class in Chinese school for years and years, with a few years of ballet when I was very little. Dan is not as much into the dancing but wants to learn to do this for the wedding and is trying really hard. Sometimes (in life) he'll get frustrated enough to lose his temper (rare) when he's not learning something quickly enough for his own standards, but we kept it light enough tonight to laugh about our various mistakes.

We'll have to practice a bit, but since it's not a particularly long or complicated sequence, it shouldn't take too long to make it smooth. I also like that it doesn't look too fancy, but still pretty and graceful. My aunt says that since we want to learn this for just one dance, it'll probably end up being around five lessons altogether.

My overall plan is to go with what Miss Manners said about the first dance more being about the couple opening the dancing, with the couple breaking off about halfway through to start collecting more people onto the dance floor. Look, it's even in the Wikipedia article on the first dance: "The 'first dance' of a bride and groom is a popular element at many post-wedding celebrations in modern European and American traditions. Exactly like an old-fashioned ball, the idea is that the bride and groom, as the guests of honor at a dance, open the dancing, not that they perform a choreographed duet for spectators."

I figure this helps us avoid the wedding-as-a-stage syndrome, gives us less to have to learn in order to fill up the time, and will also allow us to dance for a bit with our respective sets of parents without needing to do separate things like a father-daughter dance. And, this'll be one clear way to get people to start dancing. Some more ideas from 2000 Dollar Wedding on how to get people to dance:

• pick a very high energy first song and ask everyone in the wedding party to dance their hearts out to get the party started. Bridesmaid Cara has already volunteered her efforts for something along these lines (thank you).
• also ask a few trusted friends and family members to commit to dancing right away too (Emily N, Caitlin...I'm looking at you)
• start telling people way ahead of time to "make sure to bring their dancing shoes" and continually emphasize that you want the reception to be about the dancing so that when it comes to it, everyone already knows that's what was important to the couple and will hopefully partake
• if you want people to dance at your wedding, you should be out there dancing yourself
• get the kids involved: "About 20% of our crowd was kids, and I tried to dance with all of them. Kids usually love to dance, especially at a big party, and they really loosen up a crowd!"

In other bits of wedding planning news, I put up a big old countdown gadget on the right sidebar of the blog. Less than 100 days. Um, eek.

So I did cut out the muslin that weekend and even thread-traced the seam lines, but haven't yet sewn it up and fitted it (trip to visit college roommates in Boston, then recovering from that, then APW book club #2, then many social events this past week, blah blah excuses). That'll be my goal for this upcoming week. I should also really narrow down my ideas for the invitation designs and flowers and set up a few test runs.

We started pre-marital counseling last week, from a therapist I found through work. One of our benefits is to have five counseling sessions of any kind, for free, and evidently pre-martial counseling qualifies as falling under relationship counseling. It was a little awkward at first, but I thought the therapist was very good about just asking us questions to direct the conversation. We started with very general things, like why we want to get married, and then started moving into heavier topics like our ideas about what might make married life difficult. Nothing particularly new was unearthed for us, but it seemed useful enough to keep trying, at any rate. We have another session this week.

One thing I'm really looking forward to and crossing my fingers that it works out is a girls' weekend being planned jointly by Emily N and Abby. This is to be sort of like a bachelorette party, but minus any craziness and plus a lot more sitting around in our pajamas, watching sci-fi, crafting, and cooking. I read The Conscious Bride a couple months ago and while some of it was a little too New Age-y for me, the author did go on for some time about the importance of finding time to connect with the important women in your life before making the transition into married status.

I actually don't understand right now why getting married should change my relationships with my girlfriends in any way, but I don't want to miss out on time with them beforehand should I be wrong about things staying mostly the same. However, lots of these girls are grad students of one kind or another and would have to travel to get to the NYC area, so we'll see. I don't want to put pressure on people to have to fit in two trips to this area into their budgets and busy schedules, so if it doesn't work out for whatever reason, so it goes, but it would be a lot of fun to basically recreate the way I spent most Friday nights in college :)

Photo props

At the wedding showcase our caterer put on a few weeks ago, they had people from Fun Photobooth there with their full setup. They were really nice and we got a sample strip to take away with us. I think this would be a bit of an extravagance on the budget though, so I'm thinking a more ghetto setup with just a digital camera on a stand and a backdrop with props scattered. Maybe even use the webcam on a laptop.

It'd be nice to have physical photos though, especially to have guests put together in a guestbook. The Photojojo store is now carrying the Fuji Instax Wide Format Instant Camera which could work really well as a Polaroid substitute. It's a bit expensive for more or less a toy, $80 for the camera and $22 for film (20 exposures), but perhaps I can wrangle it as a birthday/Christmas gift of some kind. Though, I think I'm going on a cruise in the Caribbean with my parents for my birthday and I'd really like a new digital camera for that occasion (thinking of the Canon S90 right now, just based on not martha's recommendation).

I've posted before about the chalkboard message board that could go in the photo booth as a prop. They are now also carrying these photo paddles to add whimsy.

$10/paddle or $30 for pack of all 5

Can be held up by subjects or photographer for changes in scale.

On a more serious idea, I love, love the group panorama shots by A Beautiful Day Photography in Seattle (aka Conan O'Brien's wedding photographer), a new sponsor to A Practical Wedding.

I sent Kelly an email yesterday about this, I hope it's not offensive to ask about something that another photographer does. The thing is I think most of the wedding photos will just stay in an album or book and only be hauled out occasionally, but with a big group shot like this, I wouldn't feel self-conscious displaying it prominently on a wall.

Last quick thing: Miss C wrote a post about whether hiring a videographer would be worth it and the comments on the post all support asking a family friend to capture important moments in the ceremony and throughout the day to have a low-key video that could then be edited together. I like this idea, I think I'll ask someone(s) to be the Flip cam person and then also ask for help getting a video edited together. I have plenty of clips on my computer that I'm overwhelmed by trying to put together.

Wedding Pie

Of all the unconventional things we'll be doing, I wonder how high this'll be on people's list of things they're secretly appalled by. Although, most friends that we've told about this particular idea have at the very least been amused, so at least there's that.

I first saw this on The Seasonal Cook but I think Dan independently suggested it as well because he loves pie (what a wholesome All-American boy kind of thing, right?) and to save costs on crazy expensive wedding cake that doesn't taste that great anyway. We're thinking more of a pie tower, with just a small, one-level cake at the top to hold a pair of toppers and for the few people who do actually like wedding cake.

I would love for nearby friends and family to contribute homemade pies, or we can probably get a bunch from Costco or something like that pretty cheaply. Maybe I should create the label 'pleas for help' to help people help me.

[edit] Mama G had the following excellent idea: "little place cards with the type of pie and who baked it (Apple Pie – Old family recipe – baked with love by Grandma Mary)…recipe cards to add to your collection"