Who doesn’t love a wedding? I love the opportunity to witness family and friends come together to celebrate the marriage of a couple. I like getting all dressed up and sampling a little bit of everything at cocktail hour. And I have a blast on the dance floor and always eagerly await that slice of wedding cake.

But wait a second, I just thought of someone – or rather, something – that doesn’t love weddings as much as I do. Yup, you guessed it, my diabetes (or more specifically, my blood sugar levels).

At just about every wedding I’ve attended in my adulthood, I’ve dealt with some sort of blood sugar issue. There was the time that I went sky high after eating one too many hors d’oeurves and had to spend the entire rest of the evening rage bolusing. There was the time that I accidentally ripped off my pod at the rehearsal dinner the night before a wedding, causing whacky blood sugar levels and major frustration. And there was the time that I decided it was wise to eat a humungous blueberry muffin in the hours before making the waltz down the aisle as a bridesmaid in my cousin’s wedding, causing my blood sugar to go high then low then high again as I figured it would be better to be running on the higher side rather than run the risk of an “urgent low” alarm going off in the middle of the vows.

In a nutshell, my diabetes tends to throw curveballs at me when I’m partaking in wedding festivities.

But the good news is that I think I’ve finally figured out the secret to keeping blood sugar well-behaved for the full duration of a wedding! Besides monitoring blood sugar levels early on in the day and often, and making sure to make wise food choices pre-wedding, I think the trick is…

…dance like a damn FOOL at the reception.

I’m not kidding. Most weddings follow the same structure in which you arrive, attend the ceremony, transition into cocktail hour, sit down for dinner, and then spend the rest of the evening enjoying the reception by dancing and socializing. I’ve been to plenty of weddings in which the vibe wasn’t super dance-y, and those weddings almost always ended with me having a higher-than-ideal blood sugar level because I’d spent them mostly stagnant in my seat. Other weddings, though, I’ve danced from the very first song to the last, and this was exactly my strategy at my cousin’s wedding earlier this month. Post-dinner buffet, I knew that I needed to curb some of my carbohydrate consumption with a little activity, so I was ready to go when the DJ cued up the music. This attitude paid off the rest of the night, too – a surprise Ben and Jerry’s ice cream truck, followed by a cake-and-cannoli dessert spread (major props to Matt and Janet for appealing to my sweet tooth by serving up some of my all-time favorites), meant that I was doubling down on dancing and insulin intake. My dancing, which was flat-out jumping up and down to some songs, resulted in stellar blood sugar levels that I’d be happy with any day of the week, but especially on a day filled with lots of food and drink that I don’t consume on a regular basis.

So even though I was a sweaty mess by the end of the night, that was a price worth paying in order for the peace of mind I had by the time I went to bed, knowing that I’d finally been able to play nice with my diabetes and my blood sugar levels for a wedding.