Could I have this dance?
Newlyweds no longer choose Anne Murray
‘Could I have this dance for the rest of my life? Would you be my partner every night?
When we’re together it feels so right.
Could I have this dance for the rest of my life?”
Readers of a certain age and older will recognize the chorus from Could I Have This Dance, an Anne Murray ballad featured in the film Urban Cowboy. If not from your own eight-track music collection — for the movie soundtrack, as well as Murray’s Greatest Hits collection, both released in 1980, sold pantloads of copies — then certainly from numerous weddings in the ’80s and ’90s when the song was chosen by newlyweds for their first dance, that most significant ritual in a ceremony rife with them.
The first dance between bride and groom, like the exchange of vows and rings, the signing of the register and the cutting of the wedding cake, is a sign of union and commitment. Only certain songs, and lyrics, will do.
Back in the day, the choice from just a handful or two of songs would largely suffice. Anne Murray; Lonestar’s Amazed; Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World; Endless Love by Diana Ross and Lionel Richie; Joe Cocker’s You Are So Beautiful; Etta James’s At Last; As Time Goes By, from Casablanca; and Rod Stewart’s version of Van Morrison’s Have I Told You Lately fill much of the first-waltz pantheon.
In the past two or three years however, there’s been a significant move away from the million-selling pop ballads and summer soundtrack fare, as couples are increasingly choosing lesser-known songs for their first dances.
“Some people, I think, pick obscure songs because they don’t want their wedding to be like other weddings,” says Bob Freeman, whose Sounds Great Musical Services company has deejayed thousands of wedding over the past 25 years.
Couples, he notes, are now choosing indie alternative artists to dance them into decades of marital bliss: Death Cab for Cutie, for example, or Jason Mraz (I Won’t Give Up) or Mat Kearney (Count On Me). Additionally, faster songs are often being chosen, with many couples electing against the traditional slow dance.
“These are meaningful songs for them,” says Freeman, “but I’ll often see people in the crowd give a look as if to say, ‘ What IS this?’”
As for exactly why this has happened in the last few years he can’t say for sure. “Most people today have been together for eight or 10 years before getting married.
“So maybe that has something to do with it — they’ve got past that song from when they first met or first danced to.”
And for the rest of the night beyond that opening dance, some of the old classics will find their way onto the dance floor.
“But my job is to make people dance,” says Freeman, “so I’ll still play Elvis’s I Can’t Help Falling In Love and Rod Stewart’s Have I Told You Lately, but for first dances, those are long gone.”