Wedding Dialogue: Father-Daughter Dance

Over the long weekend, I watched one of my very dear friends and first college roommate walk down the aisle.

It was a bit of a trick to find the place since the hall was in the mountains and our GPS kept sending us through neighborhoods with unnecessarily windy roads. The wedding we witnessed, though, was well worth the scenic route.

By we, I mean my second college roommate, Ellen, who carpooled up with me and who brought along her invaluable and slightly chaotic GPS.

The ceremony was held outside in front of a pair of old pine trees, and my roommate looked lovely in her floor-length bridal gown.

Of course, Ellen couldn’t help but reminisce about her own wedding she’d had almost a year ago now. -Man, that doesn’t seem so long ago.

She told me about the conversation she’d had with her father during the Father-Daughter dance. Apparently, he had spent a good portion of their dance on the random topic of a trailer he planned on buying.

While I watched my other roommate later swaying with her bow-tie wearing father during her Father-Daughter dance, I wondered what they were talking about. Probably not a trailer?

I’ve been a guest and –in my younger, pixie years- a flower girl to many a wedding, but my two roommates made me curious: What kind of conversation would I write for a Father-Daughter dance scene?

The dance is essentially an intimate 2-3 minute moment between father and daughter. Some might call it a right-of-passage, but it really depends on your perspective.

And that is the fun of a wedding. It is all about the relationship and personality of the bride and groom, which is why there are so many ways to plan a wedding. For the writer, that means there are just as many ways to write one down.

So, brainstorm.

If you are writing a wedding scene, don’t feel that you need to have every moment be romantic and life changing. Stagger the conversations. Like with my friend Ellen, talking about trailers is perfectly natural in a wedding so long as it follows how the character thinks.

Oh, and make sure the food is good. You’re not paying for it so your characters might as well profit from your imagination.

~Until Tomorrow