On your wedding day, the song you first dance to as husband and wife says more about you than all the poems, readings and vows spoken just hours before. You are presenting yourselves as an official couple and setting the tone for your future together. Your first dance song can announce that you are a traditional couple, a quirky duo, a classic set, a modern team, or which one of you will be making all the major decisions from here on out!
How do you choose The Song for your first dance? Do you go with "your song" from your dating days? If you have a song from your dating days, is it one you can really dance to? I met my future husband in high school and the song we had declared as ours, Sister Hazel's "All for You" includes the lyrics, "It's hard to say what it is I see in you, wonder if I'll always be with you". Not exactly what you're going for on the day of uniting with your true love for eternity!
Do you go with a classic or does that feel too cliched and your friends will think you're lame? Because, lets be honest, we all like to judge the new couple based on their first dance song. If you pick a current song, will it feel dated in 5, 10, or 50 years? I remember hearing "True Companion" by Marc Cohn at every other wedding in the '90s. It is a great song with a nearly perfect wedding day sentiment but the part that always gave me the heebie-jeebies is, "Then I'll take you home, And with wild abandon, Make love to you just like a true companion". I could never dance with my guy to those words in front of my brothers, grandmothers, parents, etc.! The very act of throwing a wedding reception is already saying to the world, "Hey! I'm for sure going to have sex with this guy tonight!". We don't need to rub it in their faces any further, Mr. Cohn, thank you very much. Do you even let your fiancé have a say? My fantastic husband's vote was for the song "Beautiful". Aaaww...Sounds like a wonderful choice, right? Oh, I forgot to tell you...this song is a Snoop Dogg jam. Forget all the curse words and crude innuendos, here's a sampling of the lyrics that might be considered romantic- "Lil cutie, lookin like a student, Long hair witchya big fat bootie". Obviously the fiancé lost voting privileges right then and there.
So what did I do in the end? In the interest of moving on to the next wedding decision, I quickly chose a classic/cliche option: "The Way You Look Tonight". We went with the fun Frank Sinatra version over the more traditionally chosen smooth and romantic Tony Bennett cover, in case that helps me look slightly less lame. Now that it is all said and done and years later, I'll bet my hubs can't even tell you which song we danced to on our wedding night. That's ok, now I have no guilt about not letting him help with that decision!...and he has his own special memories from that night, mostly involving the buffet table and a few that are, um, private ;). So tell me, what went into your first dance decision? Did you have the song picked out before the guy? Was it easy or a bride vs. groom battle?
