Wedding Dances

Lara & Jack Sinclair

"Scottie at Swing Patrol is a miracle worker!!! Jack and I had decided to do something a bit different for our wedding rather than the traditional bridal waltz. We settled upon a Swing dance, which sounded great but with 4 left feet between us, rather delicate egos and mild to medium level cases of pre-wedding stress, our Swing instructor had his work cut out for them.

I must admit, nothing could prepare us for that feeling when the music came on and suddenly we were standing in the middle of 90 people, all of them clapping and cheering us on. It was a equal mixture of unbelievable excitement and extreme terror, but then we heard that familiar beat and suddenly we were into our first Charleston Step, and from there on in it was all just fine. Jack amazed me more than anything. During our practice sessions, he was always forgetting the next step and getting all embarrassed, but I think he was holding out on me, because on the night he was the epitome of confidence and cool. Everyone was incredibly impressed!!

We actually did our number as soon as we arrived on the night and it was amazing how it set the scene for the night and got everyone dancing and talking and laughing (hopefully not at us). A swing dance was the perfect way to start everything off for our reception and people are still always mentioning how much they loved what we did on the night. To this day no-one believes that we only had half a dozen or so lessons though, they think we were secretly practising for the last 6 months. Imagine, what we could've done if we had!!!"

Marie & Geoff Kellett

It was after our third or fourth class with Swing Patrol that we realised that we had yet another thing in common...neither of us could dance! So with a reassured belief that we were perfect for each other we decided to get married!

After organising the minor details - the church, the dress, the reception ... the real decision loomed ... what were we going to do for our bridal dance ... our first dance as Mr and Mrs Kellett? It was going to be just the two of us, the band playing, the spotlight showing and HUNDREDS of people watching! So fears aside we decided to do something different.

After the first few lessons it became apparent that the karaoke duet just wasn't going to work so it was then that we turned to Swing Patrol. We wanted a wedding that would be romantic, stylish and a day that we and our guests would always remember.

Scott was a fantastic tutor. He had such confidence in us and his passion for swing dancing was contagious! We had less than two months before the wedding to learn a routine and for me (Marie) to develop some rhythm. However, with Scott's help we need not have feared as by the end of this time we were Lindy Hopping with such confidence it was amazing!

When it came to Saturday 9 September we could not have asked for a more perfect day. We had hired a sleek black and champagne two toned Mark V Jaguar, a swing band, my father wore a pin stripped suit and with these simple finer detail we transformed the day back into time ... into the swing era. It was just beautiful. We will never forget how nervous we felt walking arm in arm to the dance floor as our bridal dance was about to begin. The sound of the record crackling was our cue to start.

To be perfectly honest we made a few mistakes but Geoff's leading was quite good and our improvisation quite extraordinary that we made it through the track. Our guests were all standing and clapping along and at the conclusion of our performance bought the house down with applause. It was the most awesome feeling and to this day, almost one year later it is what people still remember about our wedding. We take out our swing records from time to time and run though our routine. It is something we will never forget.

Thank you Swing Patrol, and in particular Scott, for everything you did for us and for helping make our wedding day so very memorable.