Alison and I wanted to make the father/daughter dance at her wedding reception special, something different from the standard “smile and walk around in circles” genre.In April we started taking lessons at Sherry Lynn’s Dance Studio for a September wedding. The music we selected for our dance was a 1980s version of Irving Berlin’s ’“Putin on the Ritz”. Ali wanted to keep it a secret so only she, her fiancé Matt, and I knew about the lessons. Matt didn’t even know what song we selected.After countless hours of practice, bickering, miscues, blaming each other for missteps, and a lot of laughter we finally got the whole way through it for the first time about 2 weeks before the wedding.I don’t even remember seeing the people surrounding the dance floor when we did it for real at the wedding reception. It was all a blur. We were in our own world. I do remember doing a lot of smiling and the bright eyed look of playful fun on Ali’s face. There was a small part where I got into the habit of singing the words during practice. When I did this at the reception Ali giggled as she sang it with me.There was a short tap dance section (21 seconds – not that I’m counting) where we had to finish by spinning around in separate circles and land on a hard stop facing each other before we continued with the dance. This brought cheers, whoops and hollers from the crowd. Way cool!All of the lessons, practice, frustration, expense, was well worth it. We had only 2:48 of or our time in the lime light, but the memories will last forever – or at least as long as I have my memory.Sherry Lynn told us more than once that no one had ever attempted a father/daughter dance like this through her studio.A while after our performance the photographer came to me in a rush and said, “Mr. Hilands, I’ve seen many father/daughter dances, but that was absolutely the best. I have plenty of pictures.”Special thanks to our instructor, Angela.Mike Hilands and Alison Brandle