The Wedding Song Blues
When you’re planning a wedding, it’s good to keep your fiancés online dating profile close at hand. This way, when the subject of your first dance comes up, you can remind him that he’s marrying a dancer, and— what’s more— according to his profile, he actually asked for a woman who can dance.
As such, I really don’t think it should be all that surprising that our first dance is kind of a big deal to me.
And that Def Leppard is NOT my idea of appropriate first dance music.
PIC said we should just engage an impartial third party to select our first dance song for us because with my head stuck in the early 2000s (yeah Celine Dion!) and his stuck in the 1980s (don’t even get me started…) we’re never going to agree.
So I said, “Fine, I’ll do a poll on my blog. We can let people vote.”
His response?
“That’s not fair. They’re not going to be impartial.”
Well.
We’ll see about that.
I want to do a waltz.
I have always wanted to do a waltz.
This desire was temporarily derailed during the two and half years that I dated a salsa instructor but once that ended, I re-found myself and my desire to waltz.
Even more importantly, I re-found my song.
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve always been a fan of Celine Dion (if you happened to be in 8th grade when Titanic came out, this is a simple fact of life and cannot be helped).
One of my favorite songs has always been A New Day Has Come and, about a million years ago, I heard a version on the radio that was the different from the version I had on my Let’s Talk About Love CD.
It was (wait for it) a waltz! A proper 3/4 time waltz!
But I never heard it again and even though I’ve always had a good ear for music, I became convinced that I must have been imagining things because every time I heard the song after that, it was the usual 4/4 time signature.
That was before Youtube though.
Or at least before I knew about Youtube.
And when I started searching for songs last week, lo and behold, it popped right up: A New Day Has Come, Slow Version.
I feel rather vindicated to know that I was not losing my mind all those years, that there is in fact a waltz version.
Now all that remains is to convince PIC that our wedding is a wedding, not an ‘80s hair band tribute concert…
Fieldwork in Stilettos 
12 Responses to “The Wedding Song Blues”
Let me be the first! You will be fabulous whatever you choose, but Titanic? This is naff!!
The waltz that came immediately to my mind is Dmitri Shostakovich – Waltz No2. “Everyone” knows it and to me when the tuba comes in, it is a sublime moment and every time it gives me goose pimples!
No no no, let me clarify: I do NOT want the Titanic song (especially because whenever I hear it I think of Katherine Tate singing it on the episode where her character Lauren gets married); I want a different song by Celine Dion that came out around the same time. Will look into the piece you mentioned though, thanks for the suggestion 🙂
Just listened to the Shostakovich and while beautiful OMG waaaaay too fast. I think that might be a Viennese waltz? As far as I know, PIC has never waltzed in his life so if we do end up going in that direction, it’s going to have to be very, very slow.
OK I misunderstood, still Céline Dion….
A Viennese waltz then is out as it requires revolving both clockwise and counterclockwise and it can be a tad fast!
I had not seen this particular Katherine Tate’s. Just checked it out and I am still giggling!
OMG it is one of my favorites. PIC and I spent about half an hour watching Lauren sketches last night- we love the one with Queen and the Prime Minister 🙂
I think this song will be the perfect compromise for you two.
Hah! Hard to say what’s cooler about that song: the sunglasses or the dance moves?
We had the same topic of discussion over the weekend! Surprisingly enough, ‘our’ song is a country song (I never even liked/listened to country until 11 months ago) “Loving You Easy”. R. played it on his cell phone the morning he proposed when he woke me up at 5 AM so that I would be in a good mood 😉
As someone who is not particularly talented in the dance department, but enjoys it, I feel for PIC… is there any other dance you could do that is slightly easier than the waltz?
Also, don’t worry about not having ‘your’ song. It will show up in time. And my grandparents (happily married 61 years now!) never even danced together in their life. Granted, neither of them were dancers, but just saying 🙂
Yeah, I know expecting someone without formal dance training to learn the waltz is basically setting them up for failure… 😦 I guess we have a whole lifetime ahead of us to learn it.
But now wait a minute, a country song?? He’s Latino! There are so many better options! I could suggest like a zillion songs for you guys (and bachata is easy, you could totally handle it).
I shall YouTube it thought and refrain from further judgement until I heard it 🙂
Interspace a lot of under arm twirling will do the trick!
Ok ok, it’s cute 🙂 And the fiddle part is really pretty. Now I “get” why you were both all “Loving you easy” on Facebook that day 🙂 CC approval granted.
Excellent, I’m glad you approve 🙂 Although it is ‘our’ song, I’m not sure we will dance to it – not sure what kind of dance would be suitable to do? So I might take you up on your youtubing of Latin music repertoire … It would only be fitting, seeing as our first dance was in your living room 😉