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NEW YORK — After the vows, the champagne toasts, the filet mignon and the first dance between the bride and groom — after all the normal wedding stuff — came the cue. The cue for the abnormal wedding stuff.

“Start waving those hands for the PARTY ROBOT!”

Into the candlelit banquet hall lumbered a menacing eight-foot-tall humanoid machine, pumping his metallic fists to the thumping electronic music, flanked by servers bearing sparklers and trays of dessert.

Party Robot, you see, is a hulking Terminator programmed to kill it on the dance floor. For anywhere from $500 to $1,200 an hour, Party Robot will keep the energy high with nonstop dancing. Party Robot will make a reception feel like a Vegas nightclub or like a future that is not so dystopian — a world where the robots are not our overlords but our hype men, our wing men, our 24-hour party “people.”

The wedding-industrial complex has apparently moved beyond photo booths, monogrammed dance floors and dove releases. Now newlyweds want to be nearly stepped on by a knockoff Optimus Prime.

At this wedding in Long Island City, against a vista of the Manhattan skyline, glow sticks were distributed, as were shutter-shade sunglasses that lit up. A groomsman passed around a bottle of Tito’s. The radiant, dancing bride wore a tiara that twinkled against Party Robot’s built-in strobe lights. As he twirled the bride around, swishing her tulle ball gown, Party Robot almost resembled a proud father — as if, deep within his steel chest, a human heart was beating ...

Amy Lombard

“Nobody really ever wants to be the first person on the dance floor,” says Sheri O’Brian, chief creative officer of Extraordinary Arts, a Massachusetts-based robot provider.

“And so when you have a robot,” O’Brian says, “I think it makes people feel a lot more comfortable to let loose.”

Of course. Why didn’t we think of that? And, if you pay a little extra, Party Robot will blast a carbon-dioxide cannon of cold fog at your guests, and also let the bride and groom take a few turns with it.

Adrian Zerla owns the Party Robot who was fist-pumping at the wedding in Long Island City. He owns five Party Robots, actually, and provides a suite of party services (DJ, lighting, etc.). Last year, Zerla’s robots did more than 200 events; the job can range from a bar or bat mitzvah, to a quinceañera, to a gender-reveal party. “They want the robot coming in, in either pink or blue,” says Zerla. (Another event company once sent a Party Robot to a reception for an infant’s Catholic baptism.)

“We started with a teen market, but now I would probably say the teen market is probably about 40 percent of it,” says Zerla. “The majority of the events that we’re doing right now are wedding receptions.”

Because nothing says “Til death do us part” like a giant robot aiming its weapon at your loved ones.

Here’s where we admit that Party Robot is not truly a robot.

He is a robot costume worn by a human. A human on stilts. Inside Party Robot, at the wedding in Long Island City, is a human named Ronald Arevalo.

Arevalo, 26, used to work in construction. Because he specialized in applying plaster, he became very good at walking in drywall stilts. He is also — and this is key — a good dancer. These two separate skills, it turns out, make him uniquely suited to excel in a second career as Party Robot.

“I do get calls where the people think it’s an actual robot, and then we have to explain to them that, you know, it is a person inside of a robot costume,” says Zerla, Arevalo’s boss.

Party Robot suits are typically custom-made overseas, for anywhere from $4,500 to $8,000 apiece. A Chinese company, Guangdong Ledmundo Photoelectric Limited, sells them off the rack for between $4,000 and $4,500. (While the company did not respond to this reporter’s inquiry, it did appear to respond to a customer’s one-star review — about the suit overheating — with this incredible smackdown: “It is a pity that the giant baby’s desires will never be satisfied.”)

“In the very beginning, the hardest part was just being able to be a robot for 45 minutes to an hour and not, like, cramp,” says Party Robot performer Shawn Vandine, owner of Big City Events outside Philadelphia. Drinking Pedialyte helps prevent muscle spasms, he adds.

Party Robot sometimes falls, which sometimes hurts the human inside. Most companies require a robot handler — an assistant-slash-bodyguard — to help the human get dressed as Party Robot, and avoid hazards such as a spilled drink or a flower girl pitter-pattering across the dance floor.

O’Brian, who used to be a competitive cheerleader, toppled over at an event once. “A chicken wing,” she says.

But the biggest hazard is easy to spot: drunk people. Drunk people love Party Robot. Sometimes, they try to push Party Robot, or fight it, like it’s been sent from the future on a mission to assassinate the groom.

“A lot of people just come up” to the robots, Zerla says, “and they start, like, feeling their butt.”

Maybe real robots will one day take all our jobs, achieve singularity and kill us all.

Or maybe they’ll follow our lead, and focus on dancing to Pitbull.

Arevalo, who lives in Long Island, knows nothing about the couple whose wedding he’s crashing as Party Robot except for their names: Megan and Sean. And Megan and Sean don’t know anything about Party Robot, or the man inside.

Arevalo’s handler is his sister, Brenda Lopez, 27. At each event she straps his feet and calves into the bottom of the stilts, and connects the wiring to the battery pack strapped to his waist. The legs actually creak like a door hinge, but no one at a party will ever hear that over the thumping bass.

Arevalo likes “techno music, upbeat music” to dance to as a robot. (Notes his boss: “Good fist-pumping music is great robot music.”) If the music is too slow, it’s harder to get people on the dance floor with him, which has led to some awkward situations.

“Sometimes, you’re dancing, but everybody left” to go sit down, Arevalo says. “So you’re dancing by yourself, and you don’t know what else to do.”

Last year, at his own wedding, Arevalo considered having — or being — Party Robot. He brought the costume with him. His wife vetoed it. Her objection was that she wouldn’t have anyone to dance with.

He tried to convince her that wasn’t true.

He told her: “You’re going to dance with me, the robot.”

At 10:30 p.m. in Long Island City, Arevalo thunked his way down the hallway and fist-pumped his way onto the dance floor to greet Megan and Sean. It’s a surprise for their guests, who scream with delight.

Party Robot handed a sparkler to the bride. Megan looks like a young Reese Witherspoon, with long blond hair and a sparkly, floral ball gown fit for a princess. Sean — handsome in his white tuxedo jacket, hair in a tidy fade — was ready to party.

Party Robot will never know Megan and Sean’s story, but maybe we can learn a few things.

“They met at a music festival,” said Megan’s father, Colin Hill, and now Party Robot’s inclusion in this blessed event makes sense — and perhaps even borders on romantic. The festival was Electric Zoo, the yearly carnival of electronic music on Randall’s Island, featuring trippy light shows, soaring pyrotechnics and blockbuster animatronics. Megan had a broken foot and was walking in a cast. Sean struck up a conversation with her, and they’ve been together for numerous electronic music festivals, and everything else, ever since. She’s 26, he’s 31, and they live in the town of Wading River, on Long Island. They’ll be honeymooning at a Sandals resort in Jamaica, in one of those bungalows right on the water.

Sean blasted his guests with the carbon dioxide gun, which filled the air with cold fog. The bride and groom’s slices of cake remained uneaten at their sweetheart table, because they still haven’t left the dance floor, and neither has Party Robot. Arevalo’s calves ached. In five minutes, he would cram his massive robot body into an elevator, head downstairs, become human again, and massage his legs.

But for now, he knew what he had to do, because the DJ was telling him.

“Get one more fist pump in with the robot!”

James Beard Award, investigative reporting, 2020

Finalist, Webby Awards, social video: food and drink, 2020

First place, Society for Features Journalism, food writing portfolio, 2019

Finalist, James Beard Award, personal essay, 2019

James Beard Award, humor, 2018

First place, Association of Food Journalists, special food project, 2018

Second place, Association of Food Journalists, food feature story, 2018

First place, Virginia Press Association, personal service writing, 2016

Third place, Association of Food Journalists, food and business writing, 2016

Second place, Association of Food Journalists, multimedia journalism, 2015

George Washington University, BA in journalism, 2007

University of Southern California/National Endowment for the Arts, journalism fellow, 2011

Maura Judkis is a features reporter for The Washington Post. She is a two-time James Beard Award winner. She joined The Post in 2011. 

Maura Judkis

Yes, Party Robots are dancing at weddings now. See what it’s all about.

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Photos by Amy Lombard for The Washington Post

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The robots are coming ... for your wedding