Surprise wheelchair dance wows at this wedding

Описание: For a dance like no other, with a woman like no other, John Palmer wanted to move like he hasn't since a pool accident paralyzed him and put him in a wheelchair 19 years ago.

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Patricia Montemurri, Detroit Free Press - ANN ARBOR, Mich. - For a dance like no other, with a woman like no other, John Palmer wanted to move like he hasn't since a pool accident paralyzed him and put him in a wheelchair 19 years ago.

So Palmer, a 37-year-old software developer from Holt, convinced his fiancee, Corey Longley, 36, to try out ballroom dance lessons to prepare for their first dance as husband and wife before 200 wedding guests Saturday night in Ann Arbor.

"Everybody is expecting us to do the same old slow dance with her sitting in my lap," said Palmer, a few days before the wedding at the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

But instead, to the music of Ed Sheeran's 2014 hit "Thinking Out Loud," the couple twirled and swirled at their reception, she on both feet, while Palmer propelled and drew each to the other in a choreographed love story on wheels.

They had kept their dance surprise a secret from family and friends, and drove 90 minutes each way for a series of lessons this fall at the Fred Astaire Dance Studio in Bloomfield Hills.

Their instructor was Sergio Sanchez, a championship ballroom pro from Ecuador, who has been partnering with Cheryl Angelelli, a wheelchair athlete and onetime Paralympian swimmer, to host ballroom dance workshops for wheelchair users at the Fred Astaire studio. Sanchez and Angelelli, who is marketing director for the Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan in Detroit, have showcased their innovative routines before national audiences at Fred Astaire conventions.

Palmer and Longley met online through www.match.com. His online profile included a photo of him in his wheelchair. His disability didn't dissuade her in the least, said Longley. Her father had a lifelong friend, paralyzed and in a wheelchair for decades, who was a constant presence in the family's Tecumseh home.

"I saw my father's friend live a very full and fulfilled family life in a wheelchair," said Longley, who directs fundraising for Michigan State University's College of Natural Science. "The wheelchair never was an issue for me. And if you met John, he's the happiest person in the world."

At their dance lessons, the couple has enjoyed learning how fluid movement can be coaxed from his chair through the ways they push and pull away from each other, and how the momentum from his wheelchair can propel their creativity.

The Ed Sheeran song they chose for the dance opens with this line: "When your legs don't work like they used to before, and I can't sweep you off your feet…."

"The first time we tried it, it was a hot mess," said Palmer. "Now we understand the movements and the things we can do."

One of the dance's choreographed highlights was a sweetly-timed smooch to these lyrics.

"Kiss me under the light of a thousand stars
Place your head on my beating heart
I'm thinking out loud
That maybe we found love right where we are."

The couple says the dance lessons will continue, but first a honeymoon in the Caribbean.

"Every time we've left lessons," said the bride, " we leave happy and with a smile."

For more of the story, click here: http://usat.ly/1Nd3bhq