Wedding Tip : First Dance

You’re first dance is an awesome moment. There’s nothing cooler than watching a couple on the center of a dance floor starring into each others souls and soaking up the moment with their closest friends and family watching. From the perspective of the event cinematographer this can be some of the most dramatic footage of the day. All too often the MC may direct friends and family to join on the dance floor and take away from the moment though.

It is important to remember that in order to make a powerful edit of this dance, we require a full dance with no couples joining in. We are focusing on the right moments and gathering close ups, medium shots, and wide shots as well as reactions from your family and friends to put together this masterpiece. 2-3 minutes of filmming this dance will just cut it. By asking others to join in (sometimes after less than a minute of dancing) we lose potential shots that would have made this dance so much better. So to summarize we suggest the following tips during your first dance.

• Tell your MC that you would prefer to dance the entire first dance alone
• While dancing, its always better to remember to rotate rather than rocking back and forth and pointing in the same direction
• If you haven’t yet, practice your dance a few times just for fun. It will help you feel more natural when you really dance at your wedding
• Try to make sure you stay in the center as much as you can, unless you have a special choreographed dance that forces you to be elsewhere
• If you have a choreographed dance, keep in mind that it will be extremely difficult to get closeups for any length of time and make sure that you practice it untill its second nature. Choreographed dances that are not mastered look unnatural and uncomfortable so if you can’t get it down, revert back to a natural slow dance that you can be comfotable with.
• Under no circumstances should you allow any distractions like photo montages during your first dance. This moment is for you only, hence the name “First Dance”
• Make sure your dance is at least 2.5 minutes, if not longer so it can be filmed properly.
• Don’t get nervous, just block everyone out and own the moment