So last Saturday was my birthday!  Hurrah!  I do love it when its my birthday, and a very lovely birthday it was.  Time well spent with my lovely friends and family, amazing, thoughtful presents and a rather magnificent cake baked by my brilliant mum (her bakes never fail to amaze me – we’re still trying to convince her to fill in that bake off application (speaking of which, wasn’t Nadia a very worthy winner and how amazing was Tamal’s sugar work!?))  Anyhoo, I was a thoroughly spoilt lady.  And once again, the hubster pulled through with the Disney presents and I am now the proud owner of not one but two Cinderella DVDs (the cartoon version and the new film version, not just two versions of the exact same film you understand, even though that would create the rather delightful option of watching in multiple rooms as I travel around my house).  Hang on, I’ve digressed – back to it.

I love the new Cinderella film so I thought i’d use it as inspiration for this weeks blog, and give a little bit of special attention to the dance that Cinderella and the prince do when she arrives at the ball, the music for which is composed by Patrick Doyle.  Please see said dance below.

What do you think?  Rather lovely is what I think, and it brings me on to something that I’ve never focused on in my blog’s before; dancing to music without lyrics.

I guess many of us choose our wedding dance song based on the lyrics in the song being meaningful to us as a couple.  I know that definitely played a part in deciding our first dance song.  But how many of you have considered choosing a song purely for the music without the lyrics?  For me there’s a certain element of romance or fairytale in so many of these types of songs.  Or maybe it’s just my mind relating back to the princesses dancing with their princes at the end of a Disney film, I’m not sure.  Either way, they make me happy and I find them to be just as emotive as a song with lyrics.

For me, Ludovico Einaudi is a classic example of this.  His music is so stripped back and gorgeous.  If you haven’t heard it, I urge you to have a listen to ‘Berlin Song’.  Stunning.

But it doesn’t just have to be songs that have never had lyrics written for them.  How about a pop song that has had the lyrics removed.  I’m sure many of you saw the gorgeous dance that the pros did on Strictly Come Dancing a couple of weeks ago to Rhianna’s song, ‘Only Girl (In the World)’ – white dresses, very dreamy, and almost entirely instrumental (from about 20 seconds in anyway).

It just works so well!

Many of us choose music without lyrics as major parts of our ceremony, Glasgow Love Theme from Love Actually and Pachelbel’s Canon in D to name a couple, but it’s not something often considered for the first dance.

So maybe that’s something to think about. It you are struggling to find that perfect first dance song, have you considered searching for a song based entirely on the gorgeous instrumental?

Thanks for reading, Victoria x