I found Frances on Yelp and based on her great reviews I contacted her to ask about dance lessons for our upcoming wedding. I contacted & talked to several other dance teachers, but am glad we ultimately chose to work with Frances! Our wedding was only 6 weeks away when we started thinking about dance lessons. I wasn't sure we'd even have enough time to learn a dance, and we also didn't want to spend too much money on lessons. We had a special song in mind, but we weren't even sure that it was "danceable" to. Frances got back to us right away and had even listened to the song I mentioned and suggested several dance styles that would work with the song. She told us that usually people take 6 lessons to prepare a dance, but said we could probably learn something in 3. This was perfect for our budget and short time line. We were having a very small wedding and didn't need anything super polished, but we mostly wanted to do a dance for tradition's sake and for fun. Taking lessons with Frances ended up being one of the least stressful and most fun parts of the wedding planning process. She was fun to work with & choreographed a fun dance that we could learn in just 3 lessons. Frances went above and beyond in squeezing in lesson times that fit our crazy schedule because we were signing up so last minute and most prime time slots had already been booked. I think one lesson was at 10pm which is later than she normally offers lessons, but she made it work for us! She also even edited our song for us to make it shorter for our dance. During lessons she made sure to video us using our phones so we could watch & remember & practice. Our wedding dance was lovely and fun when we performed it. I highly recommend taking lessons from Frances! read more

My wife and I decided to get a videographer for our wedding and wanted to make sure there were a lot of fun things to record. One thing we thought would be fun was to have an amazing first dance. Frances was so fun to work with. She gave great suggestions and also incorporated a few things we wanted to include as well. She was patient and extremely helpful and just made everything so much fun to learn. Even though we were rushed to learn a dance, she gave us the confidence to get through it. Needless to say, the dance was a big hit and all thanks to Frances! read more

About a month before our wedding, I saw a Facebook ad from MissFrancesDances for a small group Wedding First Dance Workshop. I hesitantly asked my fiance if he was interested in taking a dance lesson and he cheerfully agreed! We have been to numerous weddings in the past year and can sway and move in a crowd, but we were nervous about having all eyes on us for our first dance and figured that some coaching would be helpful. We arrived for our 1.5 hour group class and learned that there were only three other couples. With only four couples to direct, Frances was able to give each of us a lot of attention! We learned how to enter the dance floor, how to do the basic steps/sway, how to execute a sombrero turn and a "cuddle," and even to end with a dip! In one and a half hours, we went from complete novices to feeling pretty confident about our wedding, which was in 6 days! At the end of the class, she videotaped each couple individually practicing the moves/dance so that we could have something to reference once we got back home. We practiced for about thirty minutes on three occasions during the next week and on our wedding day, felt perfectly confident dancing in front of our 160 guests. My husband's mom said it looked "practiced but not rehearsed" which is exactly what we wanted. We weren't aiming for a customized, choreographed dance - we just wanted to have fun and look pretty good doing it! I'm so sad to see that Frances will be out of the country for the next year, as we had hoped to refer all of our friends to her. It was a fun opportunity for us to learn something new together! Thanks, Frances! read more

LOVED AVA! She was the best. My husband and I did two sessions with her before our wedding and I did one with my dad. Ava was patient and kind and knew her stuff! She helped us come up with two simple yet elegant dances!! Thank you!!!! read more

Francis was great! My wife and I took 5 sessions with her for our wedding first dance, and she was awesome at teaching us the right steps and choreography. We were complete novices, but over time learned a great choreography to the song we wanted. Francis' system is great in that she starts with a few basic steps, over time combining them together. Our dance was primarily waltz steps, but Francis is an expert in a variety of styles. We got a sneak peak at a few other couple's first dances that incorporated other styles of dance, so you will get a highly personalized dance. Would highly recommend for couples and anyone else who is learning dance. read more

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! read more

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! read more

My fiance and I had 5 dance classes with Frances. Originally, we weren't planning on doing a 'first dance' at our wedding ---- it felt old fashioned and we had seen so many that were so choreographed that they came off as too staged. We were just doing lessons to get more comfortable dancing together. However, after 3 lessons with Frances, we really got into it and decided that we wanted to do a first dance after all! Frances was so awesome --- she helped us decide on a song, gave us a general dance structure (entrance, fancy move in the middle, fancy move at the end) and helped us get very comfortable dancing to that song. At our wedding, we had a great time dancing together and the first dance felt very informal and fun. I highly recommend working with Frances! read more

Frances was great and made booking and logistics seamless. We worked with Ava who was excellent! She was a great teacher and so nice to be around. We have very little experience but she made us comfortable and taught us a number of moves. We got rave reviews the night of the wedding! read more

My husband and I took 3 dance lessons with Ava prior to our wedding, and we cannot recommend her highly enough! We are very novice dancers, and she took things slowly for us and built a great foundation before adding in a few fun and photo-worthy moves for our First Dance. Ava is an incredible teacher and a true professional - we feel very lucky to have learned from her! read more

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. read more

Frances is great! First of all, she extremely nice, patient, and accommodating. She really worked with both our skill and attention level. She was able to create a very romantic and entertaining dance for my husband and I for our wedding. My husband is a very remedial dancer, but she broke everything down really well for him to grasp. She made simple moves look amazing and our dance was perfect and made for beautiful photos with the lift and dip at the end! Frances was even nice enough to edit the song for us. Which is great because I am NOT tech savvy. Frances is great! And there are great places to eat around her studio for date night. read more

Both of us have zero dancing experience and no idea of what song to play before we go to see her. After five magical lessons, we have a perfect song for the dance (even edited by her), and simple but sweet first dance!! She is wonderful, sweet and very fun. She makes thing become easy and I would say this dance class is one of the most fun part of my whole wedding planning. read more

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. read more

We cannot thank Frances enough for her grace, professionalism and warm sense of humor in helping choreograph our first dance for our wedding. She was thoughtful and paid attention to our not-so-graceful dance moves. We would highly recommend Frances for dance choreography and plan to use her again to learn how to salsa! read more

I highly reccomend Frances if you are nervous at all about your 1st dance at your wedding. My fiance and I were feeling nervous, but after lessons with Frances we are so much more confident! I'm not into dancing at all, but Frances made it a fun time and was always encouraging no matter how many mistakes we made. Frances creates the perfect enviroment for new people to get comfortable. Thank you so much for everything Frances! read more

Frances was a lot of fun to work with. She prepared us for our first dance, an it was a really amazing experience. First off, she is really strong with helping you choreograph any type of dance. Hip hop, tango, waltz, foxtrot, it doesn't matter. She's probably strongest in tango and salsa, but for beginners needing to choreograph something, she will handle it. She's creative and works at your level and pushes you to learn and grow in your skill. We took about 6 or 7 private lessons for a fairly complex dance we were planning, and we pulled it off. Thanks, Frances! read more

My (now) wife and I loved going to Miss Frances Dances! We signed up for the five lesson wedding package and Frances was great about finding times to meet that fit in with our busy schedules. Neither one of us had any dance background but Frances did an amazing job teaching us some of the fundamentals, as well as various moves to string together to our wedding song. However, it went beyond just learning a scripted routine - Frances helped us to learn the basics of the moves so we were able to combine them all kinds of ways, learn how to properly transition between them, and to lead/follow effectively. Throughout it all Frances was super kind, helpful, and made it very fun and enjoyable to learn these skills! I highly recommend Miss Frances Dances for lessons - we came a long way in those 5 classes and received tons of compliments from our wedding guests on our moves! As a not-super-coordinated guy, I never expected learning to dance could be fun or that I could learn to dance well, but Frances was able to do that and for that I highly recommend her! read more

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! read more

Found Miss Frances Dances on Yelp and decided to give it a go. For context, my now husband and I are musical and like to dance but have zero formal experience or skills.... so we just wanted to get some basics for our first dance. Frances was warm and responsive from the start, and set us up for 1 lesson with Eldon (it was super easy to schedule). Turns out, we had so much fun (my husband included) that we booked a second lesson! Elton was fun and kept things light while being very focused and professional. He definitely taught us some good moves, including some basic steps (variation on foxtrot), an intro, and some dips of course. We had a blast. We enjoyed being the only students and working with our song -- that made it really practical and effective. We worked in the studio space in the Mission and it was big and open and easy to get to (near Bart). Of course on our wedding day we blanked a bit and didn't remember all our moves, but we had a blast with the lessons and did WAY better than we would have done on our own. And we nailed the dip. Would recommend Eldon and Miss Frances Dances for wedding prep or just a fun date night! read more

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! read more

Frances was a fantastic teacher, very clear instruction, and at a good pace. We took five lessons with her and progressed far faster than we had expected. The dance went down brilliantly at our wedding, and taking the lessons was a lot of fun. read more

Frances is amazing. She choreographed the BEST WEDDING dance ever for my wife and I! She is an extremely helpful, patient, and kind teacher; she worked with us over the course of three months to perfect our dance. Our guests were blown away. I could not recommend Frances more as both a person and professional. read more

Frances was wonderful, she broke the steps down to manageable pieces and always had encouraging words for us. She completely choreographed our routine and managed our time together so that we were ready after 6 classes, just as she predicted. My mom still comments on how much everybody loved our first dance and asks if we are keeping up with our couples dancing. We haven't found time as a married couple to take lessons again, but I hope we do soon. We had so much fun with Frances. read more

I was looking for a dance instructor to teach my daughter and her friend a formal dance for her 18th birthday party. I went on Yelp, typed in "ballroom dance instructor" and Frances popped up!!! I am so glad she did because Frances is phenomenal!!! When I first emailed her, she was informative and helpful!!! A few weeks later, she emailed me to follow up and to tell me that she was offering a discount for dance lessons...who would do that??? Everyone else is all about making money...but Frances is genuine!!! On the first meeting, I can see her passion in dance!!! She taught my daughter and her friend the first basic steps of the waltz and viennese waltz and by the end of the lesson, they were dancing!!! Frances was patient and offered great advice and pointers to make them look elegant and professional!!! She also took my daughter and her friend's suggestions and incorporated it to fit the dance. Frances is a real find!!! Not only did we go to Frances for the waltz, we went to her for the hip hop portion as well. Frances is fabulous!!! I highly recommend her for your dancing needs. My daughter quit dance classes a few years back. I am happy to say that because of Frances, my daughter wants to start dancing again!!! The birthday party was a success due to the waltz and hip hop performance!!! Thank you so much Frances!!! You are terrific!!! read more

My daughter and I wanted to take dance lessons for the bride/father of the bride dance at my daughter's wedding. We took three lessons from Frances, and she is fabulous. Frances got us moving right away, is very patient and easy to follow, and is an absolute pleasure to learn from. She came to the second lesson with some great suggestions that she thought would work well with the song we had chosen. It was really nice that she had been thinking between lessons about how we could improve things and make it more fun. She gave us a lot of confidence and we had a blast when we danced at the wedding. Frances is a great instructor. read more

France's was so helpful in choreographing and teaching us our first dance for our wedding. She works so hard to make a sometimes difficult process very fun. She also helped my godfather and I with our dance to the godfather theme song and she had a blast with that. She is very patient and understanding. It's important to be very clear with what you want and your ability so she can help you with the perfect first dance. read more

My (then) fiance 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! read more

This is long overdue. Frances choreographed our first dance for our wedding and we loved it, but our family and friends thought it was the most amazing and entertaining dance they have ever seen at any wedding.We wanted to do both a slow and fast dance because I don't like long slow first dances and she edited our dance and song perfectly. She was creative and really took the time to understand our personalities and incorporated any moves wanted to include. She was patient and we have to agree with everyone else on here that she really was amazing. She pushed us to do bigger and more awesome moves because we were open to doing anything really and if you let her creativity shine - she can develop a masterpiece for your wedding. She was definitely our favorite part of wedding planning - we learned some wonderful new moves for the dance floor including some fun lifts and dips. LOVE YA FRANCES! read more

Frances was so wonderful! My fiance and I are both beginner dancers and we wanted help with our first dance. Frances was so easy to work with and she really took the time to get to know our song and find a dance that matched it well. She was also very good at noticing the small details that we could get better at as we practiced. Overall, it was such a fun experience working with Frances and we both actually feel comfortable going into our wedding and doing our first dance in front of everyone! I highly recommend her!!! read more

Ava was amazing! We would have been fools just swaying back and forth without her! I am so glad we took some lessons. My fiance is a bit shy, but Ava was so patient and super intuitive to his comfort level. She really listened to what we wanted, which made learning how to dance FUN! Thank you, Ava! read more

My fiancée and I had little to zero dancing experience and we're also tone deaf with no sense of rhythm. We really wanted to do more than the 'awkward shuffle' for our first dance though and were lucky enough to find Frances...she saved us! From a standing start, in 5 lessons spread over about 2-3 months, she rapidly sized us up, put together a wonderful routine to our chosen music track and added flare and fun to turn us into something fit for the ball! Not only did Frances deliver, she flexed with our busy and changing schedules to fit us in and has actually inspired us to take up dancing as a hobby. We had real fun learning with her and our first dance was a smash hit! read more

My husband and I had 3 private lessons with Eldon to prepare for our wedding and we couldn't have been happier! We are not experienced dancers by any means and Eldon gave us a routine and moves that we could remember without feeling forced or too rehearsed. The dance turned out great. I highly recommend Eldon and Frances for any of your dance needs! read more

My husband and I hired Frances to help us with our first dance. We only had time to do one session (one hour) so we had to make good use of the time. Frances choreographed a very simple, yet also fun and quirky, first dance for us within the hour easily. My husband, who was not a dancer and very nervous, was immediately put at ease in the fun atmosphere that is her dance studio. It was one of the most enjoyable parts of wedding prep! Also, Frances video-taped us practicing on our iPhones so we could practice to it every night. She's the best!!!! read more

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!! read more

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 fiance 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! read more