"Whoomp! (There It Is)" Should Be Every Newlywed Couple's First Dance

Nuptials are rife with clichés, and in no aspect of a wedding is that more true than with the choice of a couple’s first dance song. How many times have you personally heard that first chord of “At Last” start up while salads are plated? A bunch, I’m willing to bet.

Now, “At Last” is a perfectly lovely song. And it is a very safe choice for a first dance unlike, say, “Every Breath You Take,” which turns up over and over and over again on those Hey Maybe You Shouldn’t Play These Songs At Your Wedding? lists in a way that can only mean that a lot of people are indeed playing these songs at their weddings. But “At Last,” lovely though it is, is one of the least original first dance song choices and you can do better.

Like, way better.

The choice of a non-traditional first dance song can be fraught, though, as it was at one wedding I attended in which the newlyweds danced to “Let’s Get It On.” In the telling of that it actually doesn’t sound so bad, but the doing of it was so awkward and uncomfortable for everyone involved except, presumably, the bride and groom. In fairness, the bride and groom are the only ones who should matter when it comes to the choice of a first dance song but wow, it’s been years and my memory is still etched with OH MY GOD MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP memories of the bride slinking around the groom doing a sexy (“sexy”) sort of shimmy dance while her grandfather looked on.

Maybe the ticket is that you have to be a certain kind of couple to pull off an outré first dance song. It may also be that if you’re going to go with something like “Whoomp! (There It Is)” or, like, “The Humpty Dance” — and here I must pause and beg the betrothed among us to consider “The Humpty Dance” for first song purposes because seriously how amazing would that be? — you need to do some extra planning, dance step-wise. What I’m saying is: You need to ham it up about getting down to an unusual song. Don’t just stand there shimmying. Save the shimmying for the Chicken Dance or the honeymoon suite, maybe.