Private first dance lessons for the two of you and nobody else. Taught at home or on a floor booked nearby, at whatever scale suits you, from a shaped thirty-second sway up to a routine your guests will not see coming.
Prices sit further down —
plainly, all five of them
Tell us roughly what you want and how secret it needs to be. A person reads it and telephones you at whatever time you say is safe to answer.
If you would sooner check the cost before saying anything at all, that is what the price list below is for.
Check availability for your date.
It is a spa town with a long habit of dressing up, and the rooms follow suit: high ceilings, long windows, pale stucco outside and good light within. Handsome, and quite exposing. There is no dim corner of the floor to hide in once the song begins.
Couples marry along the Promenade, up around Montpellier and Lansdown, out at Pittville, and in villages scattered along the Cotswold edge towards Winchcombe. Guest lists here tend to include people who have known you a very long time, which raises both the affection in the room and the attention being paid.
In a bright room with everyone facing you, hesitation shows and complication rarely does. A short dance with clean edges reads better than a long one nobody is certain about, so most Cheltenham couples get more from tightening what they have than from adding to it.
An instructor who covers the town and the villages around it comes to you, at a time you choose, in whatever room you have made space in.
Your routine is written by the person teaching it, from your song, for the two of you. Nothing is recycled from another couple, which matters more than usual when the plan is to surprise people: a sequence somebody has seen before is not a surprise.
Discretion is part of the job here. Lessons are not photographed or posted anywhere, your instructor will not discuss you with other couples, and if the whole thing has to be arranged around a mother-in-law who notices everything, say so and it will be worked around.
Where the diary hands you a different instructor from the one first suggested, the method, the discretion and the five prices all stay as they are.
One list, used everywhere we teach. Every figure is for the two of you together, and small ambitions are charged at exactly the same rate as large ones.
Each figure covers both of you and the instructor coming to you anywhere in Cheltenham or the villages around it. If a hired floor is needed because the house is not private enough, that is arranged for you rather than added to the bill.
Nobody has to know until the lights drop and the song begins.
Get in touch quietly Or ring 07337 111560 when the house is emptyLessons travel to you rather than the other way round, and the choice of room is mostly a question of who else is likely to walk in.
Flats above the shops near the Promenade, villas around Lansdown and Battledown, family houses in Charlton Kings, Leckhampton, Hatherley and Benhall. Move two chairs and there is enough floor for the first hour. Tall rooms help; low ceilings only rule out the things you were not going to do anyway.
If your reception room can be borrowed for an hour, take the offer. Knowing the width of the floor and the route you will walk in by removes most of the guesswork, and it is far easier to keep a rehearsal discreet on a weekday afternoon than on the morning itself.
The usual solution when a house is busy or a plan is confidential. We book a room near you for the hour, tell you where it is, and keep it for your lesson alone. No one else is in it, and no one else knows who was.
Montpellier, Lansdown, Pittville, Battledown, Charlton Kings, Leckhampton, Prestbury, Hatherley, Benhall and the Bath Road end of town — then out to Bishop's Cleeve, Winchcombe, Tewkesbury, Stroud, Cirencester, Broadway and Evesham. Somewhere between those names? It is still very likely a yes.
A surprising number of couples would rather nobody knew they had taken lessons at all, and there is no reason anyone should. Sessions happen behind your own front door or in a room booked in your name, nothing is filmed unless you want a reminder of it, and your instructor is not going to be standing at the back of the reception looking pleased. Whether the guests believe you have always been able to do this is entirely your business.
The difference between swaying and a first dance is not the number of steps, it is whether the thing has a beginning, a middle and an end that all three of you agreed on in advance. Give a gentle sway a confident walk on, one turn where the song opens out, and a clear final position, and it stops looking like something being endured. That is a modest amount of work and it changes every photograph taken during it.
Close by on this site You will find Gloucester, Worcester, Oxford, Swindon and Bristol as well.
Broader matters — choosing a song, when to begin, what to wear — are handled on the main page.
On a hired floor, usually. Once the house fills up we move the remaining sessions to a booked hall or studio near you, which brings a better surface as well as a door that shuts. If you would rather not explain where you are going, an hour is short enough to pass for an errand, and nobody here will telephone the landline to confirm it.
The dance itself is unaffected; what has to be managed is everything around it. Nothing gets filmed unless you ask for it, nothing is shared with anybody, and your instructor will not be at the wedding to give anything away. The real risk is administrative: if the song is a secret from your band or DJ too, somebody still has to hand them the correct file on the day, so appoint one trustworthy person.
Yes, and it is a perfectly workable request. In practice it means one lesson taught separately and a signal agreed beforehand, so that the surprise lands instead of causing a collision in the middle of the floor. Your instructor will be blunt about what can safely be concealed: a change of pace works nicely, an unrehearsed lift does not.
Not at all, and swaying is a perfectly respectable ambition. What a lesson adds is shape: a way of walking on that is not apologetic, a hold that photographs well, one turn placed where the song asks for it, and an ending you both know is coming. It is still swaying. It simply stops looking as though you are waiting for the song to finish.
A minute is comfortable and ninety seconds is the usual answer. Much shorter and the room has barely settled before it is over; much longer, unless the dance has somewhere to travel, and everyone is quietly hoping the guests get invited on. Trimming the track is generally the easiest single improvement available to a couple.
Not if it has been built properly. Guests are not comparing your dance with one they saw at a different wedding; they are reading confidence, and confidence comes from knowing exactly what happens next. A short dance performed calmly always reads better than an ambitious one performed anxiously, and it is a great deal easier to arrive at.
It is a common brief and a sensible one. The method is to keep the shapes ordinary and the timing exact, so that nothing looks like a step somebody had to learn, while everything still lands with the music. Most of the room will conclude that the two of you are simply good at dancing together, which is precisely the misunderstanding we are aiming for.
Let them assume the two of you have always danced like that.
Arrange it discreetly £75 for a single hour · per couple · anywhere around Cheltenham