Dance with New Stepdaughter

apwifey

My 2nd marriage, FH's first. I have a 4 year old daughter that adores FH. He is really happy to be a bonus dad and wanted to celebrate their new relationship at the reception with a dance. He wanted to dance with her to Toy Story's You've Got a Friend in Me as the first dance. They both love the movie and she will only watch it when he's home, sitting on his lap and sings the song with him.
Would this be weird? Our reception won't have the normal order of dances anyway, it would be FH/my daughter, FH/Mom, My Dad/Me, then B/G dance. Is this inappropriate? FH seems very excited, but I don't want to put an odd taste in anyone's mouth.

Jen4948

To be honest, while I think it's a beautiful idea for your FI to have a special dance with your daughter, I don't think it should come first; nor should it be a spotlight dance.

The dance that should come first should be your and your FI's first dance. You two are the reason everyone is there. Your daughter, however much loved by everyone, is a VIP but not one of the honorees of the event.

I also don't think all the dances listed should be spotlight dances, or if they are, some of them, like the MOG/groom and FOB/bride, could be combined to save time, because your guests are not going to want to watch spotlight dance after spotlight dance. That many dances could take a long time, during which the guests, being expected to watch the dances without participating themselves and without talking to each other, will feel restless.

SoonToBeSmith0512

Jen4948 said:

To be honest, while I think it's a beautiful idea for your FI to have a special dance with your daughter, I don't think it should come first; nor should it be a spotlight dance.

The dance that should come first should be your and your FI's first dance. You two are the reason everyone is there. Your daughter, however much loved by everyone, is a VIP but not one of the honorees of the event.

I also don't think all the dances listed should be spotlight dances, or if they are, some of them, like the MOG/groom and FOB/bride, could be combined to save time, because your guests are not going to want to watch spotlight dance after spotlight dance. That many dances could take a long time, during which the guests, being expected to watch the dances without participating themselves and without talking to each other, will feel restless.

This. You and your FH should definitely be the first ones to take the dance floor. But otherwise I see nothing wrong with your plan! I’ve actually been to a wedding where this was done and thought it was very sweet. That couple did combine the parents dances to save a bit of time which was nice as a guest. But I don’t think that’s absolutely necessary. You could also break things up a bit so guests are t watching 15 minutes of dancing straight. Or example, do you first dance as soon as you enter/are announced as husband and wife. Then do the parents dances and your FH/daughter at the end of dinner to officially open the dance floor to guests. 

downtondiva

It's fantastic that your FH and daughter have such a good relationship, and I think a special dance for them would be nice. That being said, I think your dance with FH should be the first spotlight dance, because as @Jen4948 pointed out, you two are the reason everyone is there.

I don't know that you need to combine the FOB/bride and MOG/groom dances (personally I'm not a fan of doing that), but I would recommend keeping them short, especially if you are doing an extra spotlight dance (remember, you don't have to have the DJ play the spotlight dance songs all the way through). Also, after your first dance with FH, do not expect everyone to just stand and watch during the other spotlight dances. In my experience, people tend to only half watch the others while starting to take their seats and talk to other guests. 

apwifey

I think he was going to edit their dance down to 60-90 seconds in case she gets stage fright. All of our dances are 2 minutes or less to hurry things along and as much as I love FH he can't dance to save his life lol. The reason we were thinking of not having our dance first was transitioning from the B/Dad dance with a music fade and twirl from my dad to FH and then at the end transition into the anniversary dance from ours like "A&K would like to now invite all married couples to join them" and playing the music from our respective parents' weddings.

Jen4948

Your single, divorced and widowed guests will really appreciate it if you would please skip the anniversary dance. Probably many of your coupled guests will too.

As a wedding guest, I hate having attention called to my marital status. Just let me dance!