Premier Wedding Dances

I initially heard about Premier by ending up on their e-​mail list through another website. After taking ballet lessons when growing up, I had always liked the idea of taking dance lessons with my honey. After reading the e-​mails from Premier Wedding Dances for several months, I finally signed up for what was called a planning session. At this point in time, I had not even talked with fiancé about taking lessons but just told him we were going to the planning session to check things out for fun. We checked in at the small studio with two different dance floors and were presented with lots of info and goodie bags – always a great start! The owner, Sheila Abbott, along with her husband and two assistants demonstrated 7 different possible styles of wedding dancing all presented in the context of how these would fit into a wedding reception. A professional DJ was present and gave ideas of how to incorporate fun things into the reception with your DJ. Sheila also did a little tutorial on dress style (including hems and bustles), shoe, and suit attire best suited for the various styles of dancing. She explained how many lessons would be required for each style and how much each would cost. The cost of a wedding package of private lessons is a sliding scale based on how many lessons you need (take more lessons, pay less per lesson). She offered everyone a free lesson/​practice at the reception site the week of their wedding. I was super excited to start dancing after watching all the demonstrations and looked to see if I could talk my sweetie into it. He agreed (perhaps in shock and surprise since I hadn’t been planning this part of the wedding for months) and we scheduled our first lesson for the very next week. We signed up for the Cinderella style dance lessons, which required 9 private lessons as well as our practice lesson at the reception site. My now husband and I had never really danced together. I’m the plan ahead, need to know the details type of girl while my husband is a natural groove, go with the flow type guy. So I was super pumped to have a choreographed first dance. He was a little skeptical at first but eventually got into the idea. Sheila did a great job explaining all the moves in a very simple and sequential way so that each move builds on something we had done the week before. She comes up with fun ways of explaining things that stick with you (Chase the booty, anyone?). We definitely blushed bright red on numerous occasions, and I’m sure we’re not the only ones! She also renamed some moves for us (The Twinkle became the Jedi and the Triple Twinkle became the Jedi and Padawan). My fiancé remembered those every time! Sheila was always encouraging even when we must have looked like the biggest dance nerds ever, and let us come in on weekends to practice on her extra dance floor. We had a lot of fun in the process, but knew that Sheila would ultimately make us look good with her great dance experience and professionalism. After all our lessons, we felt pretty good about our moves. However, the practice session at our reception site was immensely helpful as our dance space was configured differently the dance floor at her studio where we practiced. It made a huge difference to be able to practice there and also to have her give us tips for adjusting our moves to the space. So what was the result of all these lessons? Although most knew we were taking lessons, I think everyone was majorly surprised and excited to see us looking professional for our first dance (to Jason Mraz’s Lucky). The biggest and best praise, which made it all worth it, was when I asked my 4 year old niece (who was our flower girl) what her favorite part of the wedding was. When she replied, «You and Daniel dancing», my heart melted and I knew I had fulfilled her idea of a real princess that night. And for those who wonder if anyone can take lessons here even if not for a wedding, the answer is yes. We are currently part of a couples dance class and are learning West Coast Swing. Line Dance Workshops are also a big hit, although I haven’t experienced one of those yet. Although I haven’t been to another dance studio in the OKC area, I love Sheila’s fun and professional approach to teaching as well as the personal touch offered by a small studio. So if you’re wondering about taking dance lessons, do it. You’ll never regret the opportunity to learn a new way to work together with and have fun with your sweetie and everyone at the wedding will love seeing you dance like pros! Go for it!