When it came to a wedding, I was pretty easygoing about a lot of things, but there was one thing that I really, really,  really wanted.

Dancing.

And not that ‘have a DJ who puts on some random popular music and the really brave people bop along to it looking kinda lame’ dancing either.  The last time I went to a wedding in Hawaii with that kind of dancing the DJ played that Shaggy song about the spare key and the girl next door, and I wasn’t going to have that!

Nope, I wanted proper, elegant, dancing.  But it had to be something that everyone could do, which meant contradancing, with a caller.

There isn’t actually anyone who does contradancing in my neck of the woods in Hawaii, so my dad and I ordered in instruction tapes, learned how to call, taught a bunch of friends how to contradance, videotaped ourselves calling, and gave the tapes and elaborate instructions to a very brave musician who was willing to try calling.  And sorted an entire playlist.

With that problem sorted, the only other major obstacle was the dance floor itself.

The reception was held at a beautiful old 1920s lodge in the mountains, which did have a lovely flat tile floor – not ideal for dancing, but passable.  The floor was usually covered by a huge sisal rug, with a solid wooden table sitting on it, but they said we could move the table and take the rug up for the day.

Easy peasy, right?

So the morning of the wedding, we hauled the table out to the patio to hold the pre dinner pupus (nibbles), and rolled up the rug.

And found that the rug hadn’t been moved in years, and had adhered itself to the floor, leaving a rough, disgusting layer of disintegrated rubber matting firmly affixed to the floor.

So I got a bucket of soapy water, a good scrub-brush, and a mop.  And the morning of my wedding I got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed the heck out of that floor.

Mr Dreamy’s aunt came in while I was scrubbing and was horrified.   Apparently floor scrubbing was not an appropriately bridal activity.

I didn’t mind though.  I don’t mind scrubbing floors on ordinary days, and I felt that our wedding day should just be the best possibly version of an ordinary day.

It was worth it too.  The dancing was awesome.

The only regret I have is that none of the dozen people taking pictures of everything that happened that day thought that my scrubbing the floor was a worthwhile thing to take photos of!