First Dance - How does it work?

We are doing one and will dance for the whole song.

We're dancing for the whole song! And I think that's the norm, but there are lots of ways to do this.

I've seen some who are uncomfortable with such focused attention on them, either shorten the song, or pass it up all together. When my friend got married, they weren't too big on a sappy first dance, so they did a slow cover of "Crazy in Love."

I plan on doing one and dancing the entire song, we are going to start taking lessons in the fall.

If you don't want to dance the whole song, ask the DJ to invite others to join you on the dance floor after a minute or so. You could also incorporate the father/daughter - Mother/Son dance in that song or have the dj make a montage/mix.

I think we might give the photographer 30-60 seconds to get the good pictures, then either cut it short or invite everyone to join. 2-3 minutes is a LONG time to sway back and forth with everyone staring at you, and neither of us is gifted in the dance department.

If I were doing a choreographed dance I would probably dance to the whole song but we’re most likely doing stand and sway which I think would get old for a 3+ minute song. I’ll probably tell the DJ to cut it short after about 60-90 seconds. Same with the father-daughter and mother-son songs.

We're planning to dance for the whole song but we are both awkward dancers so we were thinking of doing dance lessons.

We had our DJ shorten the song so we didn't have to dance for the entire song.

We were introduced into the reception and went straight into our first dance. We did the full song and I'm glad we did. It was a few extra minutes for us to just chat and be with each other without anyone interrupting us.

I've seen where they do about a minute of alone first dance, and then invite the parents and grandparents of the bride and groom to come share the dance floor with them for the rest of the song.

We aren't the best dancers. We've asked our DJ to cut off the song after the 2nd chorus before the bridge.

I believe its 2 to 3 minutes long

I've always seen a first dance. I think were doing a medley of songs (30 secs-1 min long) and then our last song we will dance for about 2 minutes. A whole song is too long for us.

We are doing one and will dance the whole song.

We asked the bandleader to invite everyone to join us after about 30 seconds. This was actually one of my favorite memories from the wedding because of how our guests responded so well to it, his parents especially. We didn't think they would dance at all but they surprised us and his mom ended the song with him and his dad with me (I don't have parents). It was very sweet and there were a few happy tears shed!

It's not a lame question - it's a good and valid one. There are no rules and I love the fact that people are exercising the freedom to break traditions and do what feels good for them. My husband and I love to dance and are hams so we had 2 songs (a slow one and fast one). We only had them a short bit of the first (slow song) that we did the Rhumba to (not the sexy version you see on Dancing with the Stars), then we recreated the dance scene from Pulp Fiction to Chuck Berry's "You Never Can Tell." and shortly after that started, the DJ invited everyone up to join us.

We plan on doing dance lessons, but even so, are thinking about cutting it to about 2 minutes, whenever there is a natural break in the song. More chance of not messing up a shorter song

Doing the whole song!!

Completely up to you! One of the songs we are thinking about doing is pretty short so we would probably dance to the whole thing, some of the other songs we are considering are 6 minutes long and that would kill me so if we choose one of those we would definitely be cutting it down. It's whatever you're comfortable with. If you like the whole song then go for it! If you don't even want one then don't do it!

I'm aiming for songs no more than 3 minutes for this reason. You can definitely ask the dj to fade it out and end it earlier.