Father Daughter Dance

     When most people discuss father daughter dances, they refer to the wedding dance that takes place between a woman and her father on that woman's wedding day. This tradition has been around for several centuries, for its bittersweet and meaningful attributes have been touching the hearts of fathers for quite the while. Many choose to incorporate such a tradition into their weddings for this very reason.

     The father daughter dance is traditionally the very first dance that takes place at a wedding. Soft music plays as a young woman and her beloved father sway, enjoying a quite touching moment together. Such a moment means a lot, for it symbolizes a father handing his daughter over to his new son-in-law and losing his long-standing protective embrace over her. The tradition is very common in the Catholic religion, where special emphasis is put on the relationship between a girl and any fatherly figure in her life, let it be a father, grandfather, or uncle. Of course the tradition stands at large in many other religions and cultures, for it's a massive part in the majority of weddings all over the world nowadays.

By Julia Dankov

Dancing Siblings

     Dancing is a massive part of any traditional wedding, am I right? There's the bride's dance with her father, then the bride's dance with the groom, and so on. Let's also not forget that most wedding guests spend a great deal of the wedding celebrations they attend dancing away with their friends and families. It's easy to see that dancing is a common activity amongst weddings all over the world.

     For the Cajun people of Southwest Louisiana, however, dancing is not just a fun pastime, it's much more than that. Dancing plays into a whole lot of some of Cajun's oldest wedding traditions. During most traditional Cajun weddings, the older unmarried siblings of the bride have to dance with a broom in front of everybody at the wedding, mocking their single status by doing so. Older unmarried siblings also have to participate in a tradition called the 'Hog's Trough Dance'. This tradition requires the siblings to dance in an empty hog's trough until it breaks and is believed to bring good luck to the bride and groom.

     So remember, a dance may be quite the simple and enjoyable pastime to some, whereas to others it may be an embarrassing, mocking activity. In the end, however, it's safe to say that dancing really does play, in one way or another, into every wedding.

By Julia Dankov