Next up: The reception

I had one request for our wedding reception - that people dance!

I had several reasons for that desire. First, I love to dance, and I wanted to dance and have fun at our wedding reception. Second, receptions die really fast when people aren’t dancing. Third, I have friends who also love to dance, and I knew that our reception would be a failure without it.

Thankfully, we had Nate’s cousins (mine too now, I guess) DJ the reception, and they put a ton of forethought into the playlist.

When we got to the reception, kind of late due to our pictures, we hurriedly ate, cut the cake and gave speeches so that the party wouldn’t die.

I shouldn’t have been concerned.

After our first dance, father-daughter dance and mother-son song, the music started bumping. Little kids were the first ones on the dance floor, but pretty soon our friends took over. The dollar dance just egged them on, and one thing I’ll never forget is the fact that some of my friends danced with me, and Nate’s male friends danced with him. It was odd, but enjoyable.

The dance floor was full the entire night, and I only left to get glasses of water every now and then. Nate had a cigar, but even took a break from that to come back in to dance to “Thriller,” a must-have for his family. My family must-have was a polka song that actually recruited a full dance floor.

At one point, I went to sit by my family, who were resting at a table. I didn’t want to neglect them so I sat down for a second. Looking at the dance floor, 80 percent of the movers and shakers were male.

“Have you ever been to a wedding where there are more guys than girls on the dance floor?” I asked my mom.

“No,” she said.

There were plenty of guys out there having a blast, and we knew there would be.

From throwing the bouquet to tossing the garter to getting Rick-rolled by Nate’s work friends, our reception was an evening to remember.

And we've already been told that we need to renew our vows pretty soon so that people can have another party.

Side note:
We almost got the reception even later than we did. When the bridal party was standing on the stairs leading into the reception hall, a drunk guy approached us and actually started walking up the stairs with us.
“Are you liberal?” he asked.
Nate and I kind of just looked at him like, “What are you doing here?”
“Are you liberal?” he slurred again.
“No,” Nate said.
“Come on man, be liberal,” the drunk said, oh so convincingly.
Nate turned to me.
“Is he part of your family?”
“No.”
“This is our wedding, beat it,” Nate turned to the drunk, full on angry now.
We had planned to walk into our reception in handcuffs, just for fun. But Nate was ready to use them for a different purpose then.
“Beat it or I’m going to use these handcuffs on you,” Nate told the guy.
“Come on, be liberal,” the drunk said again, slowly backing down a stair at a time.
A couple more threats, and he ended up at the bottom of the stairs, still pleading with us to turn liberal as we walked into our reception.
He actually made it inside later than night until a friend’s mom told him to leave, and she and my mom glared him out the door.