When you don't want to dance at your wedding...

How do you get everyone else who wants to dance up and going?


We have been quite assaulted by a lot of people regarding this...on one hand they're all making it out like if we don't start the first dance, the apocalypse will come and our wedding will be a disaster. On the other, they don't understand why anyone wouldn't want to dance.

Truth be told we both feel that dancing a strange waste of energy and time. We share the same urges to want to eat, drink, breathe, make love, be creative, listen to music, watch movies, look at art, read, play games, etc etc like everyone else but somewhere in our minds the urge to get up and aimlessly move around to music just doesn't exist. It simply seems tedious and pointless. We wouldn't be enjoying ourselves if we did it - just acting on an obligation.

I mean we don't gasp in shock when people tell us they aren't interested in keeping aquariums. Why is dancing looked at like some basic thing that everyone is supposed to like and are expected to do regardless of whether they actually want to? It's so annoying.

Anyway, so basically everyone thinks we're crazy, and they're insisting that it will mess things up.


What to do? We don't want to discourage people from dancing after all...I mean we do have a band and a dance floor for a reason. Just not for us.

Exactly. Just aimlessly moving around to music.

It's not the same as people who take it as a very serious art form and study it and practice it - I admire that. But when it's just "hey let's bop around for no reason" I simply fail to see the purpose. If people like doing it, that's great. But I just don't get why they think something is wrong with me for not finding any fun in it. Whenever I have done it, like you said either for obligation or just because I didn't want to be the one awkward loner in the corner, I couldn't wait for it to end. All I kept thinking about were all of the other things I would rather be doing like talking, eating, drinking, wandering or even just relaxing and actually being able to listen to the music.

Yet everyone thinks you have a hole in your head for not wanting to do it. They'll even try to force you to do it as though you're missing out on some amazingly important thing and they just can't bear to leave you behind. So odd.

It's like I said, no one goes around expecting everyone to want to keep aquariums. Or to knit. Or to write poetry. To cook. Or even to watch a sporting event. With almost all other voluntary human leisure activities, people generally figure "to each their own." But not with dancing. dancing is some sort of completely pointless yet completely obligatory pursuit. I don't get why dancing has become some expected activity that requires some major explanation for exemption to the point where our wedding plans are confused and difficult simply because we're not interested in bopping around pointlessly.

Nice one on the cake!

The pressure really is the questionable part of it. I just fail to see why people find dancing so important. It's like I said about how we don't go around pushing everyone who isn't into fishkeeping into fishkeeping. It's simply an activity that some people do or don't find enjoyable. Why is dancing looked upon almost like eating or making love...like it's some essential primal survival thing that everyone is expected to want to do by default? Why has it become such an essential part of a wedding that we have to worry about how to plan around our lack of interest?


Anyway, it's not about feeling like a dork or being uncertain about doing something in public. There isn't any performance anxiety, just a lack of interest in doing it.


It's like this wretched math homework I'm doing right now. I'm planning to teach English and yet they force me to take some pointless math concepts course that not only costs me money, it takes up my time that could and should be spent doing more relevant things. I'm perfectly capable of doing it, but i hate it. That's how I feel about dancing.



So yeah blah blah - anyway, anyone think of alternatives for how to get everyone else up and going in a world where they're convinced they have to wait for us?