Get up, Get up and Get Down

I love weddings. I realize that most times when you hear that, the person that says it is an older woman in a movie wearing a flowered dress who is sobbing into a lacey handkerchief. But I don't really care. There are very few times or places where you see so many people so happy. More than any other event that doesn't involve recreational drugs, weddings have a hefty smiles-per-capita index.

The greatest concentration of this happiness is on the dance floor. This patch of parquet draws people of all ages and rhythmic penchants. The bridesmaids and groomsmen usually starts things off: the ladies lose their heels and the guys lose their jackets. Generally, there are one or two groomsmen that vie for the role of Alpha, sweating and flailing to Prince or Black Eyed Peas or -- if they are lucky and gutsy enough to take their chances -- Michael Jackson. They strut and shake, with an eye on the ladies to see who they impressed. They're much like rutting elk, in that way.

There is, almost undoubtedly, a flower girl there on the dance floor. She is probably about two or three years old. She is usually made to dance cutely, lifted up into people's arms and swayed back and forth, and passed around so that everyone can dance with the cute flower girl and isn't this the cutest thing and would somebody puh-lease get a picture of this.


There is the guy who tries to make up for his lack of dancing ability with a litany of joke dances: the lawnmower, the shopping cart, the sprinkler, etc. He gets a few laughs, but after a while he starts to get uneasy, because you can only sprinkle so long before it dries out. He eventually eases into a conservative sway-and-clap, and is happy when he realizes that no one is really paying attention to him anymore.

The scene eventually evolves into a circle, into which the boldest of the bunch immediately venture. They show off their best moves for the rest of the group, and bask in the hoots and hollers. The crowd claps in unison for each dancer, throws their hands in the air as if they simply do not care, and starts a chant -- something like "Go [person dancing], Go [person dancing], go, go, go [person dancing]". Swept up by the rhythm and ritual, more people enter the circle, one by one. Sometimes they pretend like they don't want to dance in the circle, with shy faces and sheepish movements—but with one fateful twitch they start dancing like an squirrel in its death throes. It's at this time that you realize that some dances look bad.

You start to look around, and realize that a lot of people look bad when they dance. The wedding dance floor is, after all, the only place that people who can't dance find an excuse to. Uncle Vic and Aunt Connie aren't one for the club scene after all, and rugs in their general vicinity have remained mercilessly uncut since before it was Bobby Brown’s Prerogative. But there they are dancing. And so are many others: people with no rhythm--bouncing and throwing their arms around, apoplectic, jerking themselves around as if tugged by a drunk and irritated puppeteer. Other people seem to move in slow motion, missing the beat so badly that you swear you’ve reached the hinterlands of Hypercaucasia.

The thing is: this is my favorite part of weddings. I love that Grandma gets to dance a few when her usual Saturday night involves Lean Cuisine and Everybody Loves Raymond reruns. I love that Vic and Connie strut around each other like there is no one else on the floor. I love that there are four generations gyrating in a 90 square-foot area, and I even love that dude over in the corner of the floor whose white man's overbite is so bad that you think he might choke on his own chin.

I love to watch it all. And then I clap. I twist. And then I shout. I get it started in here. And then I laugh to myself, and saunter over to that older woman in the flowered dress to see if she’ll laugh at my Lawnmower.