08. Nightlife
The disco. The evening guests. The Hog Roast. The AMerican guest who had never received ‘The Bumps’, but did that night. The Canadian who showed us his, shall we say, less Canadian side. We could talk about all of these, or we could talk about The First Dance.
The dreaded first dance. Shortly after the proposal, I’d jokingly said to D “We’ll need to take dancing lessons, of course. For the first dance.” We looked at each other. Tango? Waltz? Foxtrot? Visions of the two of us in Tuxedos ran through our heads. But here’s the thing: We don’t dance close. Never have. The best we can do is hug, and shuffle in a circle. It looks more like a slow motion drunken brawl than a dance. So the idea was immediately discarded.
Then my brilliant boyf had the idea of having a first dance that was Everyone on the floor at once. But what to choose? It had to be populist enough for everyone to recognise, but personal enough for it to mean something to us. And Dancing Queen was perfect. Not, perhaps, ABBA’s finest piece, but we both grew up on opposite sides of the Irish Sea being obsessed about ABBA. They were our first pop idols.
 I worried about the title: Was it sending the whole thing up? You know, ‘Queen’. Two Queens getting married. What did that say about my masculinity. Can you tell I overanalyse sometimes? Did I mention that already? And when I do, I do talk bollocks! Anyways, it was (and remains) the best first dance number ever! Everyone sang along. Everyone smiled. The room was filled with fun and laughter, and the fact that D’s sister had pointedly, and totally coincidentally, namechecked this song as his lipsynching track of choice as a young Queenling (princess?) made it even sweeter and more lovely and beautiful and wonderful.
The balmy night. The habit I developed of picking up drinks, taking two sips, putting them down and forgetting them (IÂ wonder who ended up drinking them?). The dancing to ‘Spinning Aound,’ to ‘Everything she wants,’ to ‘From Paris To Berlin,’ the laughter. The love.
The final dance of the evening: Everyone on the dancefloor for Heather Small’s ‘Proud’, the chorus “What have you done today, to make you feel proud?” answered by the hundred smiling faces, singing along, clapping.
The best day of my life.
But don’t take my word for it. Take a look, and remember, put your cursor over the pic, left click, and get a pic you can see without squinting. Technlology: It’s a marvel, i tells ya…
