Wanna dance? Bring money.

Look closely at that photo. The setting is a wedding reception in a quinta, basically a large retable hall for parties of the wedding, baptism, first communion, birthday, and quinciñera sort. Besides the revelers and the obligatory bottles of Coca-Cola and Squirt, we have the bride, and the groom, who is decorated with what looks to be about 700 pesos ($70).

This is a longstanding but not universally popular custom at Mexican weddings, whereby guests pay for the privelage of dancing with the bride and groom by pinning (or taping, as the case may be) money on their clothes.

I learned about all this thanks to my pals Judith and Rafa, who were helping me take part in another long-standing Mexican tradition: skipping the wedding (booooooring!) and going straight to the party while bringing friends who do not actually know the happy couple. The lovebirds work at the same bank as Judith, but I they were strangers to me. I certainly didn’t know them well enough to sit in their quinta for three hours in a Jedi trance induced by very generous amounts of carnitas, fresh tortillas, tequila, Squirt, and loud music. But this sort of thing is okay here.

Back to the money: Judith told me she knew a couple that raked in 10,000 pesos with their money dance, or roughly the equivalent of a decent middle-class monthly salary. A fine custom, I reckon, given the financial state of most young people. The groom could especially use the help, since, being a good Mexican, he probably paid for all of their dates.

Learn more about Mexican wedding customs here, but keep in mind that you’re not going to find everyone at every wedding. The groom at this wedding, for instance, was not taken to the bathroom by his male friends and stripped of his clothes.