Normally, we don’t give our clients ‘teasers’ or ‘tasters’ of their wedding images as we prefer them to see the full story, in all it’s glory, when all the careful editing work done by Mark is complete. There is nothing better than inviting a couple in to view the beautiful story of their wedding day on the big screen – I have to say, we often require the tissues to be handy!
However, we were contacted by Claire and Allan who were married a couple of weeks ago at Argyll’s Lodgings on the approach to Stirling Castle with their reception at The Royal Hotel in Bridge of Allan. Claire told us at they have been interviewed for a newspaper article about their first wedding dance and wondered if Mark had come across any good shots while editing to accompany the article. Mark had already told me on return from Claire and Allan’s wedding that their first dance was ‘amazing’ so I was keen to hear more.
I’ll leave Claire to tell you the background to how this all came about:
“I decided (I’m not going to say we!) that I would like to get some dance lessons because I wanted to do justice to my dress! Allan is famous for “not dancing” (although given the right music, a bit of Nirvana and sufficient beer he will get up and jump up and down). I didn’t want to do the usual shuffle around the dance floor, and because the song we wanted was ‘I Want You’ by The Silencers, it lent itself to something a bit different (it was our first dance together – we were in Kames near Tighnabruaich at his gran’s old flat and it was our first New Year together. The song came on the stereo and we slow danced around the living room!).
We had had private lessons before for some ceilidh dances (as Allan went to high school in England he didn’t get tortured at Christmas like the rest of us) from a woman I used to work with, but he’d forgotten everything (uh huh!) and I didn’t think I would be able to come up with a routine on my own, so I did a bit of googling for some local dance classes, and came across Margo Fitzimmons.
Margo had recently moved to Tillicoultry, and we went to visit her in January to let her hear the songs – we also had Bobby Darin ‘Don’t Rain On My Parade’ which we were thinking about using for the second dance. Our intention was to do our dance to The Silencers, and instead of the rest of the wedding party getting up during this, for them to wait until this song. Margo listened to both songs, and we chatted about what our (my!) ideas might be and we left Margo with the music to come up with a routine.
The next time we saw Margo she told us that as the Silencers song was very long, (and not ideal for dancing to!) that she had cut both songs, and segued them together – and it worked. She had taught us the moves in sections, and we videoed each of us dancing with Margo so we could refresh our memories when practising between lessons. We had around 8 lessons, ending with some in a local church hall so we could get a better idea of the space we had. People were asking me what our first dance was, and I just kept saying we were going to have a shuffle round the dance floor – I wanted it to be a surprise for our guests. I told the wedding party that we wanted to dance on our own, and they could get up to the next song.
Of course, I had to remind Allan when we were practicing that he wouldn’t be able to stand that close to me but not tell him about the dress! We decided that we would have a wee practice in the bridal suite at the hotel just before the evening reception, but the dress and the carpet proved to be a bit problematic – I was worried at this point it was going to be a disaster but when we got up on the floor it went pretty smoothly and everyone was amazed. We both felt really confident, and thought it had been well worth it. My mum had been worried about me not managing the stairs at Argyll’s Lodging in my heels (I spend my life in trainers and flat shoes!) but she said to me she couldn’t believe she was worried about that when I could manage a whole routine in heels.
The great thing about Margo is she comes to the house – so we didn’t have to embarrass ourselves in a class!”
So, we were happy to supply and image of their fantastic first wedding dance to accompany the newspaper article. I think they were pleased with our choice as Claire said “Oh wow Donna – that is amazing ! Brought a wee tear to my eye 
. These tantalising glimpses are killing me!” and told us that when Allan saw the picture, he just said “the man’s a genius”! Thanks guys! Here’s that image again:
