My kids were thrilled to be getting into party clothes at bedtime and I was thrilled that the caterers were dishing up just as we arrived.

It was Tim's turn to do the sober duties. As the 'credit crunch' has emptied my purse and I had to go back to using my teenage tricks of buying a coke and then disappearing under the table to top up with extreme cheapo vodka which smelled like paint stripper. When a pint of common label lager and three cokes costs over £7.50, I have to admit that pride and morals are too expensive to maintain.

The DJ was playing all my favourite tunes and I found myself every three minutes jumping up and down, clapping my hands exclaiming "Oh, I love this song"!

The problem with that though was it did not give me much opportunity to go back to the table for a slurp of paint stripper. Why is it that, no matter how much natural rhythm one has, it never translates when you are sober on a dance floor?

Repeatedly, I had to grit my teeth through the pain of a stitch so as not to lose face in front of my fellow boogiers. I am the boogie woogie master! It is a widely acknowledged fact.

Last night however, nobody was looking at me. No crowds circled round me chanting my name, no attention whatsoever, zip. Instead I was elbowed to the side of the dance floor as the throng crowded round someone else. A new talent who was grinning from ear to ear as she stole my glory. The throng thief was my six year old daughter.

Twirling her dress and throwing some serious shapes she was bopping her little heart out. Silver sparkly shoes tapping and gliding so fantastically that she put my moonwalk to shame.

As I danced with her, I soon found myself wearing that expression, the one I can remember my mother wearing about a decade ago at another wedding party.

Mum had enthusiastically jumped up to dance to her favourite tunes, then a Spice Girls song had mixed in and I joined her on the floor. I showed her my moves and smiled smugly as I accepted all the "wow, you are a great dancer" compliments.

Mum did her best to copy my routines before plonking herself down and hitting the whisky, too deflated to hold onto her smile. History was now repeating itself.

When did I become uncool? Our relatives were laughing openly as I showed my girl a bit of Mambo combined with a lot of hip hop to which she showed me a near perfect Elvis lip curl and single eyebrow lift.

I suddenly found myself feeling a bit foolish and sulkily retreated to our table and drank vodka so strong I feared a hangover would kick in next morning and hastily sunk a pint of soda water.

On all the tables were helium balloons and by 10pm the helium was still inside the balloons and not inside the best man's lungs so my son and I went and collected a bunch. Those balloons were the highlight of my little boy's night.

As I tucked the kids into bed that night, I realised that this was the first, in what was inevitably going to be many occasions, which I felt like an old duddy in front of my kids.

Pretty soon I will battle to receive half-hearted hugs and reluctant conversations about their day. Screaming matches about skirt length and shaven heads will rage over the din of door slamming and blimmin' awful 'music'.