Pet Peeve #137: Line Dancing at Weddings

After attending so many weddings in such a short amount of time, I’ve noticed a few trends, most of them positive. There is, however, one aspect of these weddings that happens during the dance portion of the evening that I’ve realized I really don’t like. If you read the subject line, you know what it is: line dancing.

I’m not a good dancer, but I’ve gotten to the point where I can have fun on a dance floor, particularly with Caroline. I don’t know any dances—I just go out there and move around and try to find some semblance of rhythm. However, the inevitable moment comes during every wedding when a line dancing song comes on, and I walk off the dance floor. When those songs start to play, if you don’t know the dance, you simply can’t do anything but stand and watch and wait until the song is over.

You know these songs—they range from the electric slide to the cha-cha slide to the Macarena and the more modern Soulja Boy “Crank Dat” song. I don’t know anyone my age who watches MTV, but somehow everyone knows that damn Soulja Boy dance. The song starts to play and people line up like automatons. It’s kind of creepy.

Granted, it’s somewhat fun to watch if people are dancing in perfect synchronization. However, it doesn’t seem like those people are actually having fun—they’re too focused on getting the moves exactly right. To me, dancing is fun if you do your own thing and have fun with it, not focus every element of your being to do it “correctly.”

The big thing for me is the exclusionary aspect of line dancing at weddings. At some point during this past weekend’s wedding, I was sitting at the table when a cool-sounding song came on. I stood up and grabbed Caroline so we could go dance to it. But when I looked up at the dance floor, people were lining up and preparing to do the moves to this particular song (the lyrics of the song evade me, but I vaguely recall thinking that they were “Bounce, Bounce, Podiatrist”). I threw up my arms in frustration (by that I mean that I lifted my arms upward, not barfed my appendages). Why couldn’t this song just be a normal song? Is this what the world is headed to? All dances will have set routines that you have to follow—no individuality allowed.

Anyway, I still had fun dancing, and I’m sure most people will continue to include the electric slide in their wedding playlist. Not me, though. When I get married, no line dancing. Not one song.

0 thoughts on “Pet Peeve #137: Line Dancing at Weddings”

  1. you’ll be happy to know there was absolutely NO line dancing at my wedding (and no ymca, chicken dance, any of that crap)…. in fact, i have not been to any weddings with line dancing, that i can think of. it seems like such a bar mitzvah-ish thing to me.

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  2. I, too, hate the choreographed dancing at celebrations. But you’re usually still eating at that point, so no worries. And if you have finished, it’s a good time to sidle on up to the (hopefully open) bar.

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