NASHVILLE—The nation’s wedding disc jockeys held a closed-door gathering at a Ramada conference center Tuesday to admit publicly that the entire profession amounts to four songs, a conga line set to a kitchen timer, and a man named Gary pointing at the dance floor.

“We’ve carried this for a long time,” said Dale Pruitt, president of the National Association of Mobile Entertainment Professionals, reading from a prepared statement while standing in front of a fog machine. “Every reception you have ever attended has been the same reception. Only the napkins changed.”

According to the disclosure, the four songs are “the one that makes the grandmothers get up,” “the one with the dance instructions in it,” “the one from the movie,” and a fourth that attendees described as “just whatever is happening at 9:40.” All other tracks played at weddings are reportedly filler, intended to buy time while Gary identifies a target.

Gary, whose last name could not be confirmed and is believed to be a formality, is said to be the industry’s only active pointer. Sources say he operates from a rotating schedule of 14,000 weddings a weekend through a system the association declined to explain beyond describing it as “a lot of driving, and also not just one guy.”

“Gary isn’t a person so much as a posture,” said Dr. Marguerite Felch-Oyelaran, a senior fellow in Reception Dynamics at the Institute for Applied Cha-Cha Slide Studies in Dayton. “You see a man in a vest extend an arm toward a cluster of cousins, and the cousins comply. We’ve studied this. Resisting Gary has never once been documented.”

The tell-all also revealed that the conga line is not spontaneous. It is triggered by a timer set for 10:15 p.m., after which it proceeds whether or not anyone wants it, and it has reportedly dragged at least one bride’s father through a coat check against his will.

Perhaps the most closely guarded secret, Pruitt said, is the unbreakable law that at every wedding, someone’s uncle will walk to the booth and request “Mustang Sally.” The request is never fulfilled, never forgotten, and always delivered with the confidence of a man who believes he has invented it.

“We have a name for him,” Pruitt said. “It’s ‘the Uncle.’ We rotate the first name.”

Asked why the industry chose to come clean now, Pruitt cited “fatigue” and “a growing sense that the Macarena has been trying to tell us something.” He added that the association has no plans to change anything.

“We’ve carried this for a long time. Every reception you have ever attended has been the same reception. Only the napkins changed.”

Couples reacted to the news with calm. “Honestly, that tracks,” said newlywed Brianna Kowalczyk-Tran, who spent $2,800 on a DJ and recalled being directed to the dance floor by a stranger’s forearm. “I remember thinking, ‘Who is this guy?’ And then I was doing the Electric Slide with my accountant.”

At press time, Gary was reportedly pointing at the press conference attendees, who were filing toward an open area near the shrimp station without being told why.