The Father-daughter Dance

In our culture, the father-daughter dance is a tradition upheld in most weddings, one in which the father dances with the bride, kind of a poignant summation, a handing off of his little girl with one last nostalgic dance to their favorite song, something very meaningful to both of them.  This was the background that Lafawnda and I were presented with when we began working on our dance months ago.

Various relatives and friends had suggestions of various kinds.  This was the result of that - and then I'll let you in on the conclusion!

We picked a slow song, something quite sentimental and sweet.  As the Disc Jockey played it, we began our dance:

We were serious as is appropriate for this sad occasion.  After all, as bhb said, I am giving my daughter away and that is heart wrenching.  We continued this way for awhile:

Unfortunately, the photographer missed some of the steps taking place.  What you see in this picture is Lafawnda right after she has shown her boredom and I am talking to the DJ, asking him what the heck he is playing???

This was all planned.  When Lafawnda and I truly examined our relationship, what really stood out was our relationship with Popeye!  No, really.  When she was little, around four or five, we would faithfully set aside time every day and watch Popeye!  She could imitate Olive Oyl perfectly.  This represented our relationship to a tee.

I sent an email - and this was the early days of email, mind you, but I worked in that industry - to the syndicate that owned the Popeye cartoons at that stage.  I said that I was Lafawnda's father and that we watched Popeye every day, like clockwork.  Delightfully, they had the great sense to have Popeye himself respond!  He sent an email to Lafawnda and she was in 7th Heaven!  She saved that email somewhere and we are hoping to find it again some day.

So, she and I went online and found a Popeye Sailor's hat and a corncob pipe being sold for Halloween.  We ordered it well ahead of time and on the day of the wedding, it was safely folded and tucked into my tuxedo!  So, we had it set up that when signaled, after we had shown our disdain for some packaged, schmaltzy dancy, he faded it out and faded in The Popeye Theme!  As he did so, I pulled out the sailor hat and the pipe and we finished our father-daughter dance representing who we really were:

It was our dance of true celebration all the way!  The people in attendance absolutely loved it!