23 Dec Couple of the month: Tina and Max
In this article cycle, we will post interviews with some of our wedding couples to help you better understand the preparation process as well as what to expect from the dance on the big day. You can see the dance video at the end of the article!
Dance style: Mix Styles
Song: Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words) – Bobby Womack
Amount of Lessons: 5
1. How did you pick a song for your first dance?
We chose “Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words)” – the Bobby Womack version. We wanted something that felt authentic to the kind of music we like to listen to (funk & soul). We wanted a dance that would be upbeat and a song that would make people smile!
2. What was the most important requirement for your wedding dance?
Finding a way to make it work (and not step on each others’ feet), given our height differential…Max is 6’7″ and Tina is 5’5″. We also wanted to look natural and not make the dance TOO choreographed.
3. How many months in advance did you start? Did you have a dance experience before?
We reached out to Brooklyn Dance Lessons at the beginning of March 2022, and decided to jump on to 2 Group Dance classes in their wedding cycle at the end of March/first week of April. After learning basic spins and dips, we started immediately after with 5 private lessons (once per week). Max had 0 dance experience and Tina had some dance experience from her elementary school days, but we had no experience dancing together. Although the 5-cycle privates are typically not enough to learn full choreography, we were ambitious in putting our steps, spins, dips and transitions together into an easy dance that worked for us, with our instructor’s help.
4. What was the biggest challenge for you preparing the dance and how did you overcome it?
For Tina, it was letting Max be the leader. Because I feel pretty confident on my feet, it was hard for me to let go and follow him!
5. Did you feel comfortable on the dance floor on the day of the wedding?
We did! We tried to practice every few days, including after finishing our private lessons, up until the day of the wedding. When we got to our venue in Italy, we made sure to test out our moves on the exact dance floor so we could decide how to orient ourselves, knowing where the musicians and our guests would be positioned. The only X factor was the dress, since I didn’t get to practice in it beforehand.
6. Tell our future couples what to expect from the wedding dance on the day of!
Expect to make a mistake (we totally missed a step) and be ready to recover from it! We decided to just finish counting (to 8) in place while still moving our feet, which allowed us to continue with the rest of the dance with the song and tempo (exactly as we planned it).
7. How did you feel after the performance on the day of?
We felt great, all of our friends and family loved it and totally weren’t expecting us to do that
8. What advice can you give to the couples?
It’s ok to want to come away with a specific dance (for your song), but the most important thing to take from your lessons is how to dance to any song. Tina was super fixated on THE dance, but our lovely instructor reminded us that we had an arsenal of knowledge that could be applied to most of the music we were playing on the day. Even if something were to go awry during the first dance, we just needed to follow each other’s cues to get back on track. And, we COULD dance to any song throughout the night since we learned how to lead/follow one another.
9. Are you going to dance after the wedding? 🙂
Definitely, we had such a blast. We didn’t stop dancing during our entire after party. We are hoping to take lessons again in the winter for fun so we are ready to dance the night away at some weddings in 2023
You can see their dance below:
See more wedding dances by Brooklyn Dance Lessons on our youtube channel.
Book your dance lesson here.