MissFrancesDances

We hired MissFrancesDances to learn a few moves for our first dance. Ava was our dance instructor. She was fabulous! We had so much fun working with her. She was very friendly, supportive and listened to our ideas. Even if they weren’t very good ones :), she still let us voice our opinion. We also incorporated our own flair that made it «us».
We only had 3 lessons with Ava, but those 3 hours were very valuable and we learned a lot! We were confident that we wouldn’t look like complete fools by the time our wedding rolled around — I have no idea what we would have pulled out if we didn’t have some sort of guidance. Thank you, Ava and Frances!

Frances was super responsive and set us up with Eldon for a series of five courses soon after we contacted her. My now-​husband and I really enjoyed working with Eldon — he was clearly very knowledgeable and instilled in us both an appreciation and love for dance. :)
In the five weeks we worked with him, we learned many basic steps from different ballroom dance styles and had an entire routine for the night of our first dance, which went as well as we could have hoped.
Thanks, Eldon and Frances!

FrancesDances is AWESOME. My fiancé and I scheduled one lesson and hoped it would be good enough before our wedding in March. We’ve never taken a dance class but are pretty good dancers (according to us.!). In one hour Eldon created a great Bachata dance including a cute intro that we could practice on our own. I am SO excited to perform this!
I definitely recommend taking at least one class if you plan on a bride/​groom (or in our case bride/​bride) dance before your wedding. Frances is also very responsive and accommodating. Thank you Eldon and Frances!

My husband and I had never danced together and were both nervous about dancing at our wedding, particularly the first dance. We contacted Frances to set up some lessons after getting a gift from a friend. She was incredibly warm and responsive over email and set us up with Ava who had come highly recommended by friends who worked with Ava before their wedding. Ava turned out to be EXACTLY what we needed. She was organized, supportive, creative and fun, and choreographed an amazing first dance for us. Her choreographing skills, as well as her teaching skills were right on point and helped two non-​dancers become dancers within a matter of hours! Within 6 lessons, she had created, taught and fine-​tuned our dance. Not only did we feel comfortable dancing, but we felt inspired to continue this fun activity together. The learning process was an important bonding experience for my fiancé and me as we navigated the stressors of planning a wedding. Our dance practice between lessons and lessons with Ava were a welcomed respite from the intensity of planning. The first dance at the wedding went from being the part we were MOST anxious about to being the absolute highlight of the night for both us. We had so much fun surprising our friends and family with our choreographed dance and we discovered a new way to spend quality time together! We are now trying to figure out how to continue lessons with Ava and maybe even join their dance team!

Frances and Eldon are AMAZING!!! My husband and I have literally zero dance skills and they were able to teach us a difficult dance for our wedding that totally wowed our guests. Taking dance lessons was honestly one of the best parts of wedding planning and Frances and Eldon are both so warm, inviting and helpful. I would 100% recommend working with Frnaces to anyone interested in learning a dance for their wedding!

We had a great pleasure working with FrancesDances. Frances is very responsive and accommodating. She provided all necessary information right away and set clear schedule, she also put together a song for us bc our wedding dance consists of two songs stitched together.
Teacher Eldon did an amazing job staging our wedding dance, even without much prior dance skills my husband was able to learn and memorize all the moves and pretty dips. We loved our classes, they were efficient and fun. 5 classes were just perfect to put a dance together and make sure we got it. Thanks and we highly recommend it for other couples looking for a wedding dance.

I bought my fiancée wedding dance lessons as a Christmas present prior to our wedding ceremony. It turned out to be one of the best gifts. We opted to do six lessons prior to our wedding and spaced them out over a two-​month period. Frances was extremely responsive to my email questions and getting everything scheduled properly. She was even able to accommodate our schedule changes for the lessons. These dance lessons turned out to be a great date night for the two of us.
Eldon Bryce was our dance teacher for all our wedding dance lessons. He was fantastically patient with me throughout the entire process. We created an entirely choreographed first dance to the song of our choosing. While I won’t dive into the details of the dance I certainly learned a lot about the various dance moves, dance styles, and was able to experience a new aspect of my relationship with my fiancée.
Our dance lessons were in the Mission and in Japantown. If you are looking to dust off your dance moves and/​or surprise your wife went dance lessons you can’t go wrong with Frances.

My wife and I got married last Spring and I wanted to surprise her with some dance lessons for our first dance. Luckily for me I didn’t have to look far for a dance instructor given that Fran and I are friends from college. However, Fran was in Europe for a year with her husband to study the arts, but that did not stop her from setting us up with dance lessons from her instructor Ava! Even though we were time zones apart, Fran was quick with email responses and setting things up for us.
We had 5 lessons with Ava, which all wonderful. Ava went through a lot of basic dance steps such as the single step, buchata, waltz, and fox trot throughout our lessons. I was slower than my wife at learning the dance moves, but Ava was very accommodating and helped me with all the steps as well as gave me tips and what to do. We worked on the choreograph throughout the 5 lessons, and at the end of the lessons we had a wonderful first dance, which ended up being one of the highlights of our wedding day/​night. I would highly recommend Fran and Ava for all your dancing and wedding dancing/​first dance needs!
We had Visual Poets (plug for Sonny Tang) as our videographer, so check out their page for our dance video.

Frances was recommended to us by two of my husband’s coworkers. We’re so happy that we decided to take dance lessons from her! Neither of us know a thing about dancing, and we wanted to look at least somewhat put together for our first dance at our wedding. She started with the basics and broke everything down in a way that was easy for us to learn. She helped us choreograph a fun and sweet dance. We had a lot of fun learning from her and practicing on our own, and we felt confident out on the dance floor in front of all our family and friends. Frances was fantastic and we’d highly recommend her!

My (then) fiancé and I both love to dance, but didn’t really have any experience slow dancing together, so decided to take a few lessons. We shared our song with Frances and she taught us how to dance to it while simultaneously choreographing it for us. Despite plenty of tripping over ourselves practicing in our tiny apartment. we danced it perfectly at the wedding, to cheers from the crowd! Frances was so friendly and easy to work with. We will remember our first dance forever, and hopefully so will our wedding guests!

My main goal in taking wedding dance lessons (3 with my now husband, and 1 with my father) was to *not* just sway back and forth, since I personally find it boring. I didn’t want to do any fancy tricks, but just have a simple routine with some nice turns. Frances definitely helped us achieve those goals — and then some!
From the get-​go, she made sure to understand what we were looking for in our dance and listened carefully to the songs we picked out so she could come up with choreography ideas. Even though we were beginners, she taught us some pretty fancy moves. That said, anytime I felt awkward or uncomfortable doing a move she suggested, she would suggest several alternate options. For both the first dance and the father-​daughter dance, she recorded us doing the routines and sent us the videos so that we’d have something to practice to — so helpful as the big day approached! Another great perk was that Frances edited our first dance song down to 2 min (from the original 3+min) so that it would be better to dance to.
I tend to overthink things, so although she gave great tips to improve our form, the best advice she gave was to be in the moment and «tell a story» with our dance. We were able to do that on our wedding day, and were cheered on by our friends and family who blown away by our dance and the emotion behind it. Thank you, Frances!

Frances helped us learn a short dance routine for our wedding. We chose songs and she choreographed the dance based on our choices. Her choreography was really fun and easy for beginners like us to remember. We had a great time with her during our lessons since she is a very friendly and energetic individual. We felt very confident going into our first dance and received a lot of compliments on it at the wedding. Thank you so much Frances!

My husband and I had one dance lesson with Eldon before our wedding, and he was fantastic. He listened to our song beforehand to get a feel for it, then choreographed an entire dance for us (who have no formal training in dance), in one lesson! I would recommend him to anyone looking to take dance lessons.

We went to a wedding where our friends hand the most hilarious, fun, and good first dance. Frances was behind it! While we chose to be a little more serious, we were very happy with our dance lessons and the final result.
Eldon was the dance teacher we worked with, and he was fantastic. Very warm, friendly, and supportive, even when we had no idea what we were doing. It’s clear that he is really passionate about dance! He had a wonderful way of moving the lesson along without overwhelming us. And he listened to what we wanted and translated that into something we could do. We also took our parents for a lesson, which was a fun way to get together and feel comfortable for the father/​daughter mother/​son portion of the night.
Frances was very easy to coordinate with and her prices were reasonable. I would definitely recommend MissFrancesDances whether you want a full choreographed dance or just a few moves to get through that fateful first dance!

My [now] wife and I booked 3 private lessons through Miss Frances Dances and had the pleasure of working with Taba. Taba will work with you to help improve the aspects of your dancing skills that most need improving. Plus, she’s very good at leading or following as needed.
However, the pricing for the dance classes were a little steep. Thus the docked star.

We went to Frances to help us create a special first dance for our summer wedding. She was not only super patient with us and my (now) husband’s bad jokes, but also very nice, and educational with the way she taught us the different moves. What we liked about her instruction was we really got to learn the different steps prior to putting it all together and choreographing our dance. So while we learned our own unique first dance, we also learned just how to dance with each other in general and feel like better dancers because of it.
I always wanted to take lessons prior to getting married, but my husband wasn’t as excited… but after the first class, he came around and truly started to enjoy them as much as I. During wedding planning, it’s such a fun activity for you to do together to relieve the stress, and I was even surprised at how much my husband could move his hips! ;)
I would recommend Frances to anyone both looking for a unique first dance or just a fun thing to do with your partner!

My husband and I wanted to choreograph our first dance and looked online for studios in the San Francisco Bay Area. We chose Miss Frances Dances, because Frances offered flexible hours and the two studios were located in unique neighborhoods with parking.
Frances is very sweet and observant. She also has a lot of great ideas. Within the first couple of sessions, she was able to interpret our personalities and began to incorporate «us» into the dance to make it our story. In addition to developing an amazing choreography to our song «Everything,» she also taught us dance moves that will enable us to continue dancing. We had so much fun working with her.

Frances choreographed our first dance for our wedding and was absolutely AMAZING. Neither my husband nor I had any prior dance experience and we were ambitious in what we wanted to accomplish. Frances helped us choreograph a medley that consisted of a hip-​hop dance, an elegant foxtrot, a spicy Tango, and a finale that included a Persian dance (my husband is Persian). She didn’t even have prior experience with Persian dancing but was able to choreograph a style after looking at a handful of videos.
She is AWESOME, incredibly responsive, creative, and wonderful to work with. I wouldn’t recommend anyone else!

Frances is the best! We are so happy we chose her for our wedding first dance. We initially decided upon her because she is very responsive by email, and her lesson prices were reasonable. The locations she teaches out of in SF were convenient for us, and she teaches the full 60 min (unlike many teachers who only do 50 min). Once you’ve signed up with her, she keeps her calendar online, so it’s easy to check her availability.
When we met her, her personality matched the already positive view we had of her. She was excited when we told her the song we picked, which was a fast, fun, nontraditional wedding song. She picked up on the vibe we were going for, and choreographed a dance that fit our personalities and the energy we wanted for the dance. We didn’t have to negotiate dance moves– Frances naturally found choreography that fit our tastes and dance ability.
As a dance teacher, she is great. We both came in with little dance ability. With that said, our strengths and weaknesses were very different. I had done a little dance as a kid, and fitness classes over the years, so counting and learning choreography was not new to me. But making the dance look good does not come naturally to me. On the other hand, my husband can make the moves look good, but counting to the music, and many of the basic dance moves were very foreign to him. Frances did a great job of helping us with our very different weaknesses.
We started with her 6-​lesson package, and decided to tack on an extra lesson at the end to help bring it all together. And that was because we were not the best at practicing between lessons until it was crunch time (the last couple weeks before the wedding).
In the end, we had a great dance with full-​on, fun choreography that totally surprised our guests. They all loved it, and my parents (normally pretty conservative) said it was the highlight of the reception. I have a friend who is a professional dancer, and she and her dance partner/​date were very impressed that we learned all that we did from scratch in 7 lessons, since it would typically take 10 for their students.
We would highly recommend Frances for any other couples looking for an instructor to choreograph their wedding first dance. With all the stress of wedding planning, Frances never added to it. And in fact, we thoroughly enjoyed our lessons with her. Unfortunately, she is going to be out of the country for a year, but hopefully when she gets back, many more couples can take advantage of her skills!

My fiancé and I are using Frances to prepare for our first dance at our wedding and couldn’t be happier. I am a decent dancer and fairly coordinated but I’ve never taken dance lessons and the «1,2,3,4» shouts don’t help at all. Frances figured out the best way to teach me (turns out watching her and video is best) and has been great at listening to my feedback.
We opted for a moderate level dance routine and feel comfortable after the 3 lessons. My fiancé and I practiced approximately 2 hours between classes so if you aren’t a practice, then the 4 classes may be a better option.
Location on Portero Hill is convenient and easy to park, Frances is busy but has a wide range of hours that she does lessons, and the hour flies by when we are working with Frances.