Father Daughter
So tonight like many other nights before it…I’m up late/ early morning surfing the web at my mom’s house. I wanted to watch the JK wedding dance again and I was hoping that it would stream smoothly for me this time.
After watching it a couple of times and the rendition of it that was on the Today show I decided that I’d look at more funny wedding videos.
I kept looking through them until I got to one that made me think…
it was a father daughter dance,a father daughter dance is a dance that symbolizes a father’s transition from the predominate male figure in his child’s life to the man who simply raised the child. The father is losing a child and letting her become a woman with her husband. A father daughter dance is used to show that the father is handing over his daughter to his new son in law and it is important that during the course of this dance the new husband is supposed to ask to cut in…and the father is supposed to give him his approval and let him take his daughter this actions shows her step from his house to her husband’s. Now in a lot of weddings it is reversed to the groom dancing first and then the father. Either way it is a nice and festive way to demonstrate that both are the most important men in the bride’s life and they both strive to keep her happy.
It made me think about my current relationship with my father and whether or not he deserves to have that right as my parent and the one who created me.Yes, my father raised me and was in my life until I was 13 but during the vital years of my childhood and all of my teen years my father wasn’t around and wasn’t a very good figure to me.
During the years that my mother was separated and after the year of having a restraining order out against my father my mother became almost like my everything.
During that time my father did try to keep in touch with me and tried to get back into a relationship with me, but I didn’t really want to have anything to do with him since I’d been in the middle of a lot of shit that went down, I didn’t want anything to do with my father after I experienced what my mother went through because of the way he took care of us.
My Dad(Papa) Eric and Cynthia
Life totally changed after my father left for the better and I feel that it was to best way for everyone in my family to survive…after he left my mother and us children struggled to make ends meet and came down on hard times but we persevered.
It seemed when I needed a male figure in my life I would look to my teachers at school or the men in my church or to the boyfriends and male friends that I decided to make. It was like I filled my life with men in order to compensate for my lack of a positive male figure.
We once had a happy life...Mom, dad, Tiffany, Evan and Me...
I have three brothers but they became three different kinds of men. One my older brother Evan doesn’t want to have anything to do with me and hates me and hasn’t talked to me in years he blames me and my mom for everything that happened. My little brother Tyler became much like my father and used his body and his power to abuse and hurt me…he doesn’t like me because I’m a lot like my mother and because he struggles with what kind of my man he wants to be…he seems to be becoming more and more like my father everyday and he resents it. My little brother Eric being young and trapped between the two households at first was upset with everyone who only took my mother’s side on the issues, but he is a quiet observer and he doesn’t want to create any opinions…over the years he’s slowly begun to understand the way my father is behind his many masks and he’s become closer and closer to my mother’s home…though he is in my mother’s home he still blames my mother and I for creating problems with my father, when i try to bond with him he pushes me away.
My Dad and I
So when I think of the father daughter dance in a wedding I can’t help but to think of the men I want there to replace my father.
Not REPLACE my father completely I think it would be rude though ifthere were some things that are traditional in a marriage that were not completed such as:
A) My future fiance didn’t ask my mother AND my father’s permission to marry me to be polite.
or if when it came to a wedding
B) If I were to decide that I do not want my father in my wedding.
or
C) If I didn’t invite him to attend at all.
I feel that having my father at my wedding is much like having him at my graduation…he contributed at one point to the creation of who I am today…and I can still faintly remember the good times, so I feel that it is his right to be a part of it…if he chooses not to attend that is his choice but I have to offer.
So when it comes to a “father” daughter dance I have in my head created a list of men who I would like to dance with me. I’m not sure how I’d go about choreographing it, but I know that it would involve me dancing with one man after the other and being passed off until I ended up with my husband cutting in and asking for my hand. If my father did decided to attend, or if he did decide to participate in my wedding reception I’d either put him as the first man I dance with before being handed off to the other men…or as the last man I’d want to dance with.
My Dad the Last Time I saw him
I read this in an article about the history of the father daughter dance:
Whether your father cannot dance, or maybe it is you that has the two left feet or the father of the bride will not be attending the wedding it is not the end of the world and no reason to completely drop the tradition of dancing into your new life. There are several alternatives that are just as fun as they are festive.
One of the most beautiful and heart warming bride dances I have seen was at my friend’s wedding. Her father had passed away and she thought there would not be a dance at all. Secretly the groom brought roses and had a friend pass them out to all male guests. When it came time the best man lead the bride on the floor and commenced dancing quickly being replaced by all the men one by one each handing her a rose as they danced. At the end the groom cut in and finished the song holding his happy bride holding a great big bouquet of roses and tears of joy in her eyes.
It’s interesting because the tradition would make it the last man but I feel that my dad would need to have earned it. I might put my mother in the last position and my father in the first to show where I place them in who raised me.
I feel that I would want to improve my relationship with my father just for the mere fact that when the time comes I want to be comfortable enough with my dad to ask him to be a part of it and not JUST FEEL OBLIGATED.
Till then these are the names of the men who came to my head when I thought of influential men in my life that I feel I respect and who I can imagine myself dancing with at my wedding: (Not in any particular order)
- Sean Phillips
- Kenneth Parsons
- Kenny McReynolds
- Eric Salone
- Tyler Salone
- Evan Salone
- Ian Morris
- Daniel Slanger
- Todd Wilson
- Mikey Boosalis
- Kyle Parsons
- Tony Matthes
- Some of the Men from Theta Chi (not listed)
- Ron McCreath
- Bob Sedoff
- Reggie Salone
- Jacob Babcock
- Adam Warmansenn
- Alex Jeffery
- Owen Nelson
- Mike Miller
- Michael Von Gross
- Matt Miller
- Taylor Listul
- Matt Johnson
- Dean Weimer
- Doug McQuarrie
- Erik Lundstrom
- Jacque Blackamore
- Jacob Davison-Horwath
- Jacob Long
- Joe Redhead
- Jerry Peterson
- Jon Cushing
- Jevon Barnes
- Jonathon Guter
- Ted Kramer
- Matthew Hill
- Jonny Hoffner
- Kevin Heesen
- Chris Tromley
- Seth Maxon
- Scott Haiden
- Jason Blatz
- Steven Draisey
- Tom Orbison
- >>>>>Craig McCreath (Even though I feel that he will have a different role here)
(Along with any other man who feels like they contributed in making me a better person)
These men listed have a special place in my heart :D!
Here may be something else I can do…
Another way to signalize the step of leaving father’s house and moving on to live with the groom is by having a friendly and humorous competition between father of the bride and groom. It could be a quiz about who knows the bride better, a race or arm wrestling for that matter. The important thing is that the father of the bride is properly cued in to lose at all cost. The winner gets the bride!
If groom and father of the bride are in decent shape you can combine the dance with another old tradition. Take a sheet and cut out a huge heart ( big enough for two) out of the middle. Have several people hold the heart sheet up. The father carries his little girl to the sheet and then hands her off to the groom who carries her through the heart. Sometimes the heart is just drawn on and the young couple has to cut it out with small scissors as a test of compatibility in working through problems before the groom can actually carry his love through.
So if my father Ronnie Bracy Salone is reading this blog right now…which in the past he’s done before I’m turning this into an open invitation to dance with me…I’d like to see if our foot steps will ever be in sync again.
Who?