Meal: The wedding meal is very familiar, as it really is just a lavish Shabbat meal composed of the five Jewish food groups: challah, fish, soup, chicken, and dessert.
Dancing: About a half hour before the groom and bride enter, the bride's friends line up at the entrance with these arch-y thingies and wave them around forever and ever, refusing to stop until the groom and bride arrive.
The band then plays, "The Final Countdown," which is the only song ever played at this time. Even if the band has something else on the roster, they'll play "Countdown" anyway because they're so used to it.
The groom and bride run through the arch-y thingies, the bride immediately gets surrounded by her friends and family, while the groom desperately tries to crawl over or around the mehitza (male-female room divider) to join his friends and family.
He will jump on a friend's shoulders and make a grand entrance. They do not do this for the bride. This isn't because of tzniut (modesty), it is because the shoulders of the bride’s friends are charley horsed from waving the tchotchkes around interminably.
The ladies will then dance with the bride using moves carefully choreographed at the Borough Park Y or local Ladies Auxiliary. The men will dance with the groom using moves carefully choreographed by soccer hooligans.
The First Law of Jewish Wedding Dance Physics dictates that the dancing must take place on a three foot by three foot space whether or not the dance floor is the size of the Gobi Desert.
The dance of choice for the second go-round is a more orderly jig called the "Hora," which means, "Ouch! Ooh! Get off my feet! Stop kicking me! How does this dance work? How do the Lubavitchers add an extra step and not end up mangling each other's legs???”
At some point, the bride may enter to sit beside the groom. Several people with complete lack of stage fright will try to impress everyone with their dancing skills. One of these people will usually be a middle-aged guy who took karate as a kid. He will attempt several kicks and splits, everyone will go "Ooooh" and "Ahhhhh." But the next morning he will pay the price with several muscle pulls and all different kinds of agony.
The groom's friends may then sing "Aishet Chayil "(“Woman of Valor”) for the bride. Even though she's officially been married for just a few hours, she's still managed to (as the poem says) seek out wool and linen, bring sustenance from afar, give food to her household and a ration to her maids, consider a field and buy it, plant a vineyard from the fruit of her handiwork, strengthen her arms, support a spindle with her palms, get over her fear of snow, clothe her house in scarlet wool, make bedspreads and garments, deliver a belt to a peddler, and have children who rose up and praised her.
That's pretty impressive. Meanwhile, her groom has managed to split his pants.
The wedding ends with various people engaged in all sorts of random activity. In one corner you'll have someone on a cell phone getting all the sports scores. In another you'll find one of the groom's friends mooching $20 off everyone to pay for the limo. At the entrance, several guests will suddenly turn into beggars for a ride home.
There will be a minyan for Maariv (evening prayers), and one person daavening the Amidah (standing prayer) will strategically place himself in front of a door that people need to access, usually the bathroom or the kitchen.
On the dais, the groom and bride will sit together and wonder when they can finally eat. The fathers will be in a corner, getting shaken down by the hall and the band for every last penny they own.
The mothers will be crying again, saying goodbye forever to their boychickel and maidele, despite being fully aware that they'll be having dinner together for the next seven days, and shabbatot, and Tuesdays, and days the bride doesn't cook, and holidays, and rainy days, and Wednesdays, and work days, and Thursdays and….
Reprinted by permission of Jew Central . Martin Bodek is co-founder of TheKnish.com . He has been published in The Jewish Press, Country Yossi, bangitout.com ,jewishworldreview.com, scoogiespin.com, and Modern Magazine.