The Laendler – Our Wedding Dance Video!

I’m so happy to share my wedding dance video with you all!  From the time I was fourteen years old, I knew I would dance “The Laendler” (from The Sound of Music) at my wedding.  After I became an adult, I figured that it might be a girlish idea I’d have to abandon…  But fast forward several years, and I met my future husband at a BALL!  A historical costume ball, people.  So needless to say, I had met the absolute perfect man for that girlhood idea.  Lars and I began practicing this dance together shortly before our engagement, and we had it down pat by the time our wedding rolled around.  Talk about happiness! 😉

Truth be told, I designed my entire wedding dress around this dance:  Since there is so much twirling, I knew I couldn’t have a gigantic Victorian bustle and thus stuck to a standard ballgown style.  During this dance the lady’s arms are raised above her shoulders quite a lot, meaning that the sleeves *had* to be flexible – so I made the sleeves ruched, and bound the edges with elasticized trim so that the sleeves would move with me when I danced.  And finally, I accepted the fact that a boned hoopskirt would make the Laendler a nearly impossible feat to pull off, so I settled on a narrower net petticoat which still added a fair amount of “pouff”, even if it wasn’t quite as full as I would have liked…

While I took all necessary precautions to ensure the dress would be danceable, I had not actually worn it for a dress rehearsal!  I didn’t want the groom to see my wedding gown until our wedding day, so I was completely unaware of exactly how it would work.  But it behaved beautifully throughout the entire dance!  The only time when I had a little difficulty was during that sequence of five rapid spins – I had to throw my weight into turning to keep the layers of skirt and petticoat from restricting my legs as the skirt was not turning at the same rate I was.  It could have been a serious problem had the skirt gotten all tangled up around me, especially with the long train bustled up.  Thankfully, though, no such trouble!

We replicated the original dance from the Von Trapp film almost exactly, and had it professionally filmed to remember forever…

So there’s my commentary for our wedding dance video!  I am so grateful to my sweet husband for being such a good sport about dancing this in front of our 200 hundred + people reception, and to the Lord for bringing us together!

If for some reason you can’t see the video on this web page please click this link ( https://youtu.be/nTElpaOvBRI ) to watch it on Youtube.

Until next time, so long, farewell, auf weidersehen, goodbye,

Katrina