First dance lessons taught privately, and wherever your venue will let us in, taught in the room where it is going to happen. Barns, oast houses and hotel function rooms all behave differently underfoot, and finding that out in March beats finding it out in front of everybody. One song, two of you, and a first dance in Canterbury that fits the room you've booked.
Prices are printed below.
No enquiry needed to see them.
Six boxes will do it. Someone here reads the lot, then telephones you to ask the useful questions: what the floor is made of, how big the room is, and how much dancing either of you actually wants to do.
Costs first, questions later? Understood. The prices are a short scroll from here and none of them are hidden.
Check availability for your date.
East Kent does barns, oast houses and walled gardens with marquees in them, alongside hotel rooms in the city itself. All handsome, and almost none of it a sprung dance floor. What is underfoot changes what is sensible to choreograph, so it is one of the first things we ask about.
Flagstones are unforgiving, polished oak boards can be quicker than expected, and a temporary floor laid over grass shifts very slightly when you do. None of that prevents a first dance. It only means certain movements are a poor idea in that room and others are ideal, and knowing which is which is worth an hour.
Where a Canterbury venue can admit us outside a wedding day, an hour on the real floor is the most useful lesson in the whole package. Nothing else tells you how the room sounds with no guests in it, how far the light reaches, or how much space genuinely sits between the tables.
Instructors covering Canterbury are matched to you on dates, on where you are, and on the kind of dance you described. Their name comes to you at the point of booking rather than on the doorstep.
Each of them writes the choreography themselves, from your record, for your two bodies. There is no standard Kent routine sitting in a drawer, and nothing you learn will have been taught to another couple in Faversham a fortnight earlier. That is not a marketing position; it is simply how the people who teach for us work.
They will also walk a venue with you and adjust things on the spot. A move that felt roomy in your kitchen sometimes wants three more feet than the barn will give it, and that is far better discovered at a rehearsal than at eight in the evening with everyone holding a drink.
Five packages, charged per couple and identical everywhere we work. Canterbury is not billed more than Cardiff, there is no quote to wait for, and nothing on this list is priced per person.
Each price covers the choreography and the teaching itself, at whichever address the lesson happens. Where a session runs at your venue, access is arranged between you and the venue, and we fit ourselves around whatever hour they are willing to give you.
Two minutes on a form now. Far less panic in August.
Fill it in Or call 07337 111560 and describe the roomThree kinds of floor are available, and around here the middle one is the one we push hardest for.
Terraces off Wincheap, houses in St Dunstan's and Northgate, cottages out at Sturry, Blean and Bridge. A cleared room and two willing people is everything the first lesson requires; the polish can happen on a bigger floor later.
A barn, an oast house, a marquee on a lawn, a function room in the city. If they will hand you an hour on a quiet weekday, take it. The routine gets fitted to the real dimensions and you stop guessing at everything.
When the house is too small and the venue is too busy, a floor is hired near you and the lesson moves there instead. Which room depends on where in east Kent you are, and it is settled before the day of the lesson rather than on it.
Canterbury itself, Wincheap, St Dunstan's, Northgate, Harbledown, Thanington, Sturry and Blean, then outwards to Whitstable, Herne Bay, Faversham, Chartham, Bridge, Ashford, Sandwich and Deal. Margate, Ramsgate and the coast beyond are usually possible given a little notice.
A short first dance is not a failure of nerve. Give it a clear beginning, something in the middle the pair of you can rely on, and a finish decided in advance, and it will read as poise. Three minutes of turning slowly in a circle, hoping the track ends soon, will not. Length is not what anybody is judging.
Moving gently in hold still has a right way and a wrong way. Weight transferred properly, arms doing something deliberate, eyes up rather than fixed on the boards. Two lessons spent on that will change the photographs more than adding steps would, and it is a great deal easier to remember when you are nervous.
Elsewhere in the South East Wedding dance lessons in London, Chelmsford, Colchester, Brighton and Guildford.
Local ones below. General questions about timing, shoes and songs are gathered on the main page.
It rules out anything vertical under that beam and almost nothing else. Give your instructor the rough height and where the beam sits and the routine is built around it, usually by keeping the travelling section to one side of the room. Old Kent buildings are full of these details, which is exactly why we like seeing the room first.
Yes, with a small caution about spins. Panelled floors laid over grass have joins that catch a heel and give very slightly underfoot, so we favour steps that keep weight settled rather than pivoting sharply. If you can get onto it the day before, one run-through there is worth several at home.
Very much so, even in daylight with the chairs stacked. What you are checking is the size and the surface, not the atmosphere. Pace out where the routine begins and ends, feel how the floor grips, and note where the band or the DJ will be. An empty room in the morning still answers the questions that matter.
Need is a strong word. Plenty of couples sway for thirty seconds and are perfectly happy. What one or two lessons buy is the difference between swaying and looking like you meant to sway, which mostly comes down to hold, weight and knowing how you are going to stop. If that does not bother you, do not book anything.
Most of it, honestly. Hold, timing, the opening and the ending all travel anywhere. What waits for the room is the scale: how far the middle section travels and whether the turns get their full circle. That is why the venue session, where it is possible, usually lands late rather than early.
It can, provided somebody adjusts it rather than hoping. A dance built for twelve square metres and performed in six looks cramped and rushed. Tell your instructor the real measurement, even roughly, and the choreography is drawn to fit from the start. Shrinking a routine afterwards is always the worse of the two jobs.
No, and anybody who was would not be teaching for us. A well-held, unhurried sway with a proper ending is a good first dance, and it is genuinely easier to deliver under pressure than something elaborate. The single lesson exists precisely for couples who want that and nothing further.
Tell us the room, and we will tell you what will work in it.
Plan your Canterbury first dance £75 for one lesson · per couple · across Canterbury and east Kent