Wedding Memories - Grants Pass Daily Courier

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2011 • DAILY COURIER, Grants Pass, Oregon — 7 A
More couples building footwork into big-day planning
By Leanne Italie
Associated Press
Michael Drazin, left, and Shelley Kapitulik take a dance
lesson in preparation for their wedding in Greenwich,
Conn.
Layoff
Associated Press
Grooms want to be ready for first dance
Looking silly — or worse —
during the first dance as a
married couple rates way up
there on the scale of wedding
stress for grooms who are terrified of anything fancier than
the high school prom sway.
“It’s not Emily Post’s dance
anymore,” said Crista Tharp, a
wedding planner in Kokomo,
Ind. “Some are doing rap, hiphop, break dancing in little
snippets. Most grooms would
probably nix the dance, but
they’re not given that option.”
Motivated by television’s
“Dancing with the Stars” and
wacky
wedding
dance
YouTube videos, more couples
are building fancy footwork
into their big-day budgets,
turning up the pressure on
members of the wedding party
with two left feet.
For those who can’t dance
— but will be singled out by
cameras and watching guests
— setting a clear goal is a good
place to begin, dance instructors suggest. Are you merely
looking to survive with a few
basic steps, or are you going
all-in with dance sequences put
together with help from an
instructor or a wedding choreographer?
Groom-to-be Jerry Karran,
28, a video editor in New York
City, decided on regular
lessons at a dance studio ahead
of his wedding in July with 400
invited guests. He tried watching instructional videos online,
but they left him confused.
“I’m very nervous,” he said.
“I’m not nervous about anything else concerning the wedding but that. I can’t dance,
like, at all. Everybody’s looking at you. I don’t want to look
stupid messing up, or stepping
on her toes or something.”
Dance lessons helped calm
Jeremy Gorelick, 30, when he
got married in April at Johns
Hopkins University, where he
met his wife. He has always
enjoyed dancing in clubs, but
slow dancing was “THE worry
of the wedding for both of us.”
They took lessons together,
but he often practiced on his
own with a broom. That, Gorelick said, was a misstep
because it wasn’t at all like
leading his bride on the dance
floor. “A broom will do whatever you do, so it was actually an
exercise in futility and probably did more damage,” said
Gorelick, of New York City
and White Sulphur Springs,
N.Y.
Start taking lessons well in
advance of the big day to make
your movements more instinctive and less dependent on
shaky, short-term memory,
instructors recommend. Beginning at least six months ahead
of a wedding is ideal, but six
weeks would suffice, so long as
at least four lessons are
involved.
Start with group lessons,
many suggest, to get comfortable on a dance floor and boost
confidence. Then take private
instruction to work on a specific routine or dance.
Jackie Horner, who was
Gorelick’s instructor, often
teaches whole wedding parties
how to dance. While women,
too, can be dance-challenged,
men are often more nervous
because they must also learn
how to lead, she said.
“I say to them, dancing is
just walking to music,” Horner
said. “I have them walk around
the room for me to just feel the
music a little bit, because there
are men who do not have any
rhythm at all. Usually it’s a little easier than they thought.”
Gorelick said beginners
should advocate for a short
song. He and his wife chose
“The Way I Am” by Ingrid
Michaelson after their instructor steered them away from a
longer tune, “based on the fact
that I seemed so tense. She
didn’t want me to be out there
for an eternity, which is sort of
what it felt like.”
James Joseph, who wrote
the book “Every Man’s Survival Guide to Ballroom Dancing” (BlueChip, 2010), said taking lessons is fine if couples
have the time, money and
inclination. For those in dancefloor survival mode, try
embellishing the basic side
step with a simple change of
footwork, a slow rotation or
some underarm turns.
“If anyone asks, tell them
it’s a foxtrot,” he said.
f
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From Page 6A
The average price of a wedding was $28,385 in 2009, down
3 percent from 2008’s average
of $29,334, according to the 2009
Real Weddings Study by TheKnot.com and WeddingChannel.com.
Brides are cutting back,
most heavily in favors,
rehearsal dinner costs and
catering, the study said.
“There’s still merriment.
It’s not something that’s going
to deplete your bank account,
but there are definitely ways
around it to still have your
dream wedding,” said Sharon
Stimpfle, deputy site director
of WeddingChannel.com.
The easiest fix? Trimming
your guest list, Stimpfle advises. And rethink the traditional
Saturday night wedding; Friday and Sunday weddings are
significantly cheaper, as are
daytime events, she said.
Even before Jake lost his
job, we tried to be thoughtful
about how to spend money on
our wedding, picking certain
areas to splurge and others to
save.
We knew we’d spend the
most on food and drinks at a
great reception spot, as well as
on a talented photographer
and an unbelievable honeymoon.
Everything else, we tried to
do on the cheap.
■ THE ATTIRE: I nearly
gave up on finding a dress
after many fruitless visits to
bridal shops. I refused to buy a
dress if the shop cut out the
label, and I wasn’t loving anything I’d tried on with the
label, either.
One afternoon, I lazily
browsed pre-owned dresses on
eBay, more out of boredom
than anything else. One seller
offered an ivory Anne Barge
sample in my size from a few
seasons back. It retailed for
more than $3,000, and I impulsively made an offer of $500,
thinking it would never be
accepted. I stepped away from
the computer, ran a couple
errands, and when I came
back I’d received the congratulatory email. The gorgeous
M on.- Fri.9-6 • Sat.10-4
Associated Press
Jake Bleed and Jill Zeman Bleed are seen during their
wedding in Omaha, Neb., in 2008.
silk-satin strapless dress was
mine (and luckily, thankfully,
wonderfully, it fit!).
And post wedding, I got a
tax deduction by donating my
dress, veil and slip to Brides
Against Breast Cancer (directions available at BridesAgainstBreastCancer.org).
■ THE PAPER STUFF: I got
all my paper goods — invitations, save the dates, programs, maps, everything —
from sellers on Etsy.com.
Sure, the thriftiest thing is to
DIY all paper stuff, but I didn’t
have the skill, time or patience
to do that.
We customized our invitations to keep them within our
budget (we used only one color
of ink for the letterpress,
skipped the reception card and
used an RSVP postcard) and
we got a lot of bang for our
buck.
■ THE DECOR: Decorating
isn’t my thing. The idea of
elaborate, expensive centerpieces didn’t appeal to me
even before Jake was out of
work. Another thing that didn’t
merit a lot of excitement was a
big, traditional wedding cake,
boom, done.
We used stands from
Martha Stewart’s craft line
from Walmart, though thrift
stores would have been another good place to look for vintage cake stands.
■ DO OVERS?: As for the
dumb things we did — it’s easy
to get too excited about things
at the beginning. Had I known
we’d be a one-income household come wedding day, I
wouldn’t have dropped $100 on
a customized wedding Web
site. Mywedding.com has fantastic, free sites that look just
as good as the paid ones.
I’d have also skipped the
wedding-day transportation.
But still, regrets are few.
We had a sunny day, good
friends and family with us and
an open bar.
We didn’t notice a single
cutback.
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Photo by Jim Ingram
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