This groom learned ballet for this romantic wedding in Mexico City

It felt like a fairytale dream I never wanted to wake up from,” Laura said about the wedding. But it didn’t start that way...It was January of 2022, the world was still shut down, and single girl Laura Hand thought she would eventually die alone. In a desperate last attempt at finding love, she took a friend’s advice and made a Hinge profile. Several weeks and several bad dates later, she matched with a boy named Charlie. Given how bad her first few dates were, she thought she’d ask her mother’s opinion this time. After all, she’d always been very close with her mom. Charlie’s profile had a video of him singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” to his younger sister at her wedding, which had happened only months before. When Laura’s mom saw this, she said, “You have to go on a date with him.” Laura watched it and agreed. As a retired ballerina herself, she valued the arts, and Charlie made an impression. Less than two weeks later, they’d seen each other five times and were celebrating Valentine’s Day together. A year and a half later, Charlie surprised Laura with a proposal in Paris, on a boat on the Seine filled to the brim with flowers. To cap off the surprise, Laura’s entire family jumped out after she said yes. Two and a half years later, with the help of Gonzalez Helfon, they were married in Mexico City surrounded by 400 family and friends.

Leading up to their wedding, Laura and Charlie discussed how they wanted to showcase the love they have for one another and for their guests. While Laura had danced ballet professionally, it had been eight years since she hung up her pointe shoes, dedicating herself fully now to a career as a documentary filmmaker. For his part, Charlie was many things - a former collegiate track runner, a JD/MBA from Harvard, a legal tech entrepreneur – but one thing he was not was a trained dancer. Nonetheless, he asked her if she wanted to come out of retirement to do a ballet pas de deux with him as their first dance. Laura and Charlie spent months training with one of her former ballet teachers.

In addition to the ballet first dance, they learned a Flamenco dance to surprise their guests at the Flamenco-themed welcome party at Casino Español, a historic Spanish casino in downtown Mexico City. Laura learned castanets and Charlie played a classical guitar piece, “Asturias Leyenda.” When the big day finally arrived, they surprised everyone with the ballet pas de deux and danced to “Nessun Dorma” from Puccini’s opera Turandot. The guests were in awe, and Laura’s mom said in her speech, “Thank you, Charlie. If it weren’t for you, we would have never seen Laura dance on pointe again.”

Once the dance was done, Laura thought they were both ready to let loose and party. Little did she know, Charlie had a few more surprises for her. He enlisted her professional dancer bridesmaids to choreograph an ensemble dance number for the groomsmen and bridesmaids to dance together. Laura was floored as they sang and danced to her favorite Jungle Book song, “I Wanna Be Like You” to her.