insects, football, and salsa dancing.

Nashville, Tennessee has a plethora of wonderful free events taking place on any given day.
One of the places where local folk often find free events is a park near Vanderbilt's campus called Centennial Park.
It hosts festivals, outdoor movies, art/dance classes, and concerts, among many other things.

Centennial Park's most recognizable landmark is a to-scale replica of the iconic Parthenon in Athens, Greece.


That structure was the instigator of this story's adventure.


My roommate had a friend in town for the weekend who was a middle school history teacher. She found it interesting that we have a replica of the Parthenon in Nashville, so she suggested we head over to Centennial Park.

So we went to the park.
There were four of us in all, and we arrived just in time for free dance lessons.

We learned to salsa dance (along with dozens of retirees) for about 30 minutes, but quickly got bored and snuck out the back.


We meandered around the park, and as the sunlight began to fade, we realized that the Parthenon was lit up a bit brighter than usual.

Suddenly, we became insects around a light: we had no choice but to walk toward the shining Parthenon.

As we got closer, we heard music.

So we kept walking.

There was a barricade of police cars.

And we kept walking. Right through the barricade.

There was a huge tent with circular tables set up inside.

We kept walking.

We walked all the way up to the steps of the Parthenon, where a wedding reception was taking place.

Inspired by the salsa classes we'd just taken, we joined the people dancing at the reception.

As we were dancing, we took a good look at the overall demographic of the other people at the reception in hopes of figuring out whose wedding we were unexpectedly attending.

The only consistent theme of the wedding guests was that they all appeared to have plenty of money.

There was no rhyme or reason to their age, race, etc.

We continued our investigation: whose wedding were we at?

We noticed a photo slideshow just outside the tent with the tables, so we headed that direction.

Sure enough, we found a significant clue: one of the photos was of a guy (presumably the groom, who we hadn't been brave enough to interact with) wearing a Titans football uniform, and three women (probably his mom, sister, and now-wife) who were all wearing the same jersey with the number 23 on it.

I looked up the Titans' roster on my iPhone as we danced our way back to the reception area, and then googled biographical information about #23. Sure enough, Titans safety Donnie Nickey had recently proposed to his long-time girlfriend.

And I crashed their wedding.

Weddings: yet another free event found at Centennial Park.