Dad Learns To Sign 'I Loved Her First' For Daughter’s Wedding Ceremony

May 25, 2021 by apost team

Weddings are beautiful ceremonies where people come together to celebrate love in many forms.

One of the best parts of any wedding is when friends and family of the bride and groom come together at the reception and share stories and toasts. One new bride was in for the sweetest surprise when her dad took to the stage in a video from 2015.

A father's importance at any wedding cannot be overstated. Everyone loves the moment when the father walks his beloved daughter down the aisle to give her away to the groom waiting at the altar. In addition to that meaningful duty, fathers are usually also expected to share a dance with their little girl and toast her and her new life.

Nicole Corte was clearly having an amazing time at her own wedding reception. The day had gone on without a hitch, and now it was her father's turn to speak at the party. As the speakers began playing the song "I Loved Her First," Corte immediately knew what was happening and had to work to control her emotions. In this touching video, you can see the beautiful bride covering her mouth as her eyes well with tears.

In addition to the sweet sentiment of the Heartland song, Corte’s father began signing the song for his daughter, who is a sign language interpreter. Although Corte is not deaf herself, as a sign language interpreter this gesture obviously meant so much to her. And if the round of applause at the end of the video is any indication, Corte’s father touched his entire audience — not to mention the thousands who have watched the video on YouTube.

It took Corte’s father a whole year to learn sign language for the big day, according to the YouTuber who posted the video. 

While there are a variety of sign languages spread throughout the world — from American Sign Language (ASL) to French Sign Language (LSF) — most are generally made up of gestures, facial expressions, body language, head movements and the space around one’s body, according to HowStuffWorks. Although some signs are “iconic,” meaning that the sign visually and intuitively represents the signified, other signs are more complex. And like the English language, there are 26 letters that people can spell with; instead of saying the letters or writing them down, speakers of American sign language use hand gestures to “fingerspell.”

Given all these complexities, it’s impressive that Corte’s father put in the time and effort to learn how to sign the lyrics of “I Loved Her First," a classic father-daughter wedding song. In doing so, Corte’s father joined his daughter and the approximately 250,000 to 500,000 other ASL users in the United States.

And it turns out that the practice isn’t that unheard of. A quick search of YouTube returns a handful of popular videos in which fathers, grooms and brides sign at weddings.

In one of the most popular videos, a dad signs the exact same song, “I Loved Her First,” for his daughter. Before beginning the song, the father in question explains why he’ll be signing the lyrics. The man’s daughter, Ally, was in a bad accident a couple of years prior.

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“Ally was in a pretty bad accident. And she laid in the hospital bed with her jaws wired shut and tubes down her throat. We had to come up with a way to communicate with her,” the father explains.

Her condition was so bad that she couldn’t speak while in the hospital, but since she knew sign language, she tried to communicate that way. Holding back tears, the father adds that while he couldn’t understand then, he’s been practicing and would like to sign the lyrics to a song.

“But I loved her first and I held her first / And a place in my heart will always be hers / From the first breath she breathed / When she first smiled at me / I knew the love of a father runs deep,” the father signs along with the song.

“As soon as he started signing I started crying,” one user commented on the video, which has more than 1.7 million views.

“Compliments to the dad for doing a great job signing,” another viewer added. “Sir, you are absolutely brilliant. You (brought) tears to my eyes, there's a lot of dad's out there that should take a leaf out of your book.”

This is why folks shouldn’t underestimate the importance of a father’s role at a wedding. Whether it’s a heartfelt toast, a beautiful photograph or a father-daughter dance, a thoughtful dad — like the two in these videos — can completely change the tone of a wedding. And it’s clear that these two men not only left their daughters feeling loved, but that they also took the extra time to show how much they care.

What do you think of these heartfelt tributes? Do you know any sign language? Let us know — and be sure to pass this on to friends, family members and fellow thoughtful fathers.