Can we dance?





It was Christmas just passed that over drinks it was discussed the then up and coming, now gone and past, the wedding of my brother Shane and his now wife Roslyn and whether or not the grooms should choreograph a dance routine to perform at the wedding afters.  Over a few to many drinks, it was agreed upon that it was an absolute certainty this would take place, with yours truly nominating myself to decide upon the music and choreograph the routine and teach it back to the groom and his groomsmen. 

In theory this seemed an easy task.  The reality is that I live in London. Far from the rest of the grooms of the majority of live in my home city of Cork in Ireland. Distance in regards to time to practice would be an issue. What harm sure, we can do it for a couple of days before the wedding. There will be plenty of time I assured myself.  We will get it down. 

The second issue with this. I a self declared Gay man who’s out and about and partial to a bit of a boogie on a night out on the tiles and unknown to myself developed an ideal image of my own dancing capabilities. Training being a passion of mine, is just teaching, is teaching dance any different? Of course ill be a natural. Isn’t it part of the DNA strand that makes me gay, that I am also a secret weapon of some sort on the dance floor?

The third issue was the music.  From that night at Christmas there was only one strict instruction from the bride, if there was to be a dance routine, there is a critical number that was to be included. Backstreet boys. A favourite. At the time i had even remembered they had the usual boy band, 90’s A typical dance routines. This should surely help with half the routine. Sorted.  By day I am a tech person, create and mixing music, can I do it? Sure can, I am sure I figure it out. 


Reality Check


I did not, as I had promised myself to spend some time each week perfecting a music selection, or for that matter get my groove on with the routine. I instead I done in all in the month the wedding took place. Luckily for me the wedding was on the last day of the month (31st of May).  It also turns out that mixing music, is not an easy thing to do. It took me 3-4 hours to perfect my mega mix. My selection of music I was proud of though.  So at a party, I am your man.  So that whole dancing is in my jeans thing, where exactly because I checked all pockets and there wasn’t as much talent as was promised by the gay fairy god mother.  That handy 90’s easy boy band routine, was much more complicated then I expected to the point I  was a bag of sweat and it took a lot of time and effort to learn, nothing of which was natural or instinctive but painfully gained through hard work. Phew not what I signed on for. 

When I arrived home for the wedding, I  came a few days early to help with the preparations. This I told myself this would be the time we could fine tune the routine to get it down. Guess what. The wedding, has many things that need to be meticulously planned and organised, and the groom has half of these tasks to complete;  which meant my brother was out of commission in regards to the time left to perform catchy dance routines. In the end, all 5 groomsmen and the groom, discussed the possibility of doing the routine over a few drinks, the night before the wedding. At 9:30 at night, it was decided lets give it a try and see how we get on.  Slightly topped up with courage from the liquid we had been drinking, we attempted to get n'sync (get it?) and figure our shit out.  This was a lot harder than I thought and I won’t lie and say I didn’t get annoyed with the lads, of course I apologize now if I was short with any of you guys.  It was hard work. After an hour and half. Some of the guys were dejected, some enthusiastic about the prospect of doing this infront of over 250 people tomorrow. The next day, the time to reverse was limited to 20 minutes. We had done what we could, made a call on the length and said to ourselves. We will see how we feel when it comes to tonight. At half 11 we met, talked and decided we would do a quick 10 minute practise and then go for it.  Sadly, we could not locate David when we decided all this so he missed the last section of the practice.  We found him outside after the practice informed him of the plans to go ahead, of which he was not best pleased. 



We done it.  It was a laugh, the crowd loved it.  I am delighted now we did and it’s something we can always look back on and laugh about.  Laugh about what parts we got wrong, how funny it looked and the laugh and stress we went though completing it.  So to CiarĂ¡n, Kevin, Vincent, David and the groom himself Shane, a job well done guys. It was a lot of fun. Never forget, every move starts on the left. 

Congratulations to Shane and Roslyn Murphy, who were wed on the 31st of March 2015.  A very proud moment for my brother and my new Sister in Law. Not forgetting little Alex my Godson.






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