We got to be a part of our dear friends Mimi and Alden’s wedding celebration when they tied the knot on September 28th! The wedding was held at Early Mountain Vineyards near Charlottesville, and it was a gorgeous place for a beautiful ceremony and reception to celebrate the couple. We had a lovely time — Congratulations, Mimi and Alden!
A video of their bridal party’s grand entrance at the reception:
…and their sweet first dance!
There’s something about weddings that I just can’t get enough of. Being there to celebrate the love of two people who love each other is always enough to spring tears to my eyes, but what I also love is all the creativity that comes out of the couples. A recent trend that I absolutely love is the surprise wedding dance — where the couple’s slow dance suddenly breaks into a high-energy choreographed dance routine. It seems like it’s only really caught on in the past couple years, but YouTube is already swarming with videos of them!
My childhood friend Marie (or Moe-chan, as I knew her in Japanese Saturday School) was married to her husband Colin on September 26th in Washington, DC. Marie, our friend Erri and I all knew each other since first grade and were inseparable through middle school at nihongo-gakkou. I can’t believe that now the three of us are all married! (Erri, being the first to tie the knot, already has an adorable two-year-old.) I wasn’t at their wedding, but I just discovered through Marie’s Facebook their awesome surprise wedding dance. They got the whole bridal party involved. Here is the video. (The two-minute mark is where you want to be!)
Though it pales in comparison to Marie & co.’s dance, Dan and I broke into our own rendition of Michael Jackson’s The Way You Make Me Feel during our first dance to Endless Love at our wedding, over a year ago. We practiced for more than a month, but they hadn’t been dress rehearsals, so I found it a lot more difficult to move in a wedding dress during the actual performance! A bit embarrassing, but it was still a hit with our guests. (Watch our video here)
For anyone looking for a way to shake up a wedding and stray from the snore-fest that is often the traditional first dance, surprise dances are a fun alternative. There are plenty of ideas on YouTube — ours was inspired by this couple (who are much better than our rhythmically-challenged selves, I might add), with some alterations here and there. It’s sure to invite laughs and tumultuous applause from your guest.