This weekend, multiplexes will be hit with what’s surely aiming to be the Valentine’s Day of wedding flicks. Directed by Justin Zackham, The Big Wedding packs Robert De Niro, Susan Sarandon, Diane Keaton, Katherine Heigl, Robin Williams, and more into a cast that’s led my Amanda Seyfried and Ben Barnes as the bride and groom. The titular celebration calls to mind a whole lot of substantial cinema nuptials, which stretch from good to great, and occur within chick flicks and masterpieces. We’ve rounded up 15 movie weddings that—aw, hell—take the cake.
Monsoon Wedding (2001)
Now releasing her latest feature, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, upon the world, Mira Nair made a major splash 12 years ago with Monsoon Wedding, her rich and infectious tale that charts the goings-on of an arranged marriage within her own Punjabi culture. True to the director’s favored theme of western-culture-versus-eastern-tradition, the buoyant movie sees people of all walks come together, and unites them through color, drama, and song (the latter proving memorable enough to launch a Broadway musical, set to debut in 2014).
Muriel’s Wedding (1994)
Known primarily as the film that launched Toni Collette’s career, Muriel’s Wedding also boasts a fine supporting turn by then-little-known Rachel Griffiths, a gleeful abundance of ABBA tunes, a hard look at provincial Australian life, and an underdog/ugly-duckling story that lingers beyond any cutesy embellishments. The big day itself may not live up to Muriel’s endless fantasies, but it hardens her resolve in overcoming self-imposed (and environmentally-worsened) limits.
Honeymoon in Vegas (1992)
Like Indecent Proposal, Honeymoon in Vegas concerns a wealthy man (James Caan) who offers a bundle of money to a couple (Nicolas Cage and Sarah Jessica Parker), just so he can spend some alone time with the comely fiancee (albeit here without the sex). After jaunts in Hawaii and a good bit of jealousy, things culminate with hubbie-to-be skydiving out over Sin City with a crew of Elvis impersonators, literally landing at a chapel to wed his bride, who’s dressed as Vegas showgirl.
The Palm Beach Story (1942)
A wildly convoluted screwball comedy, Preston Sturges’s The Palm Beach Story sees Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea as Tom and Gerry, who are shown as a married couple at the film’s start, then each revealed, in flashback, to have an identical twin (also played, respectively, by Colbert and McCrea). The flashback shows that within a love quadrangle, the wrong twin sister wound up with the wrong twin brother, and in the years following, an array of crazy encounters leads to a madcap ending, with a millionaire, a “Wienie King” (don’t ask), and even a princess (played by Mary Astor) factoring into yet more trips down the aisle, where, as is stated in the film, happily ever after is hardly certain.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)
One of the most successful (and, subsequently, most teased) indie flicks of all time, writer-star Nia Vardalos’s My Big Fat Greek Wedding put a specific spin on a tested formula, borrowing bits from Moonstruck in its tale of intermarriage, yet playing up a distinct caricature of American Greek culture. As the bride-to-be, comedienne Vardalos is endearing (especially when playing against John Corbett’s everyguy groom), and she wins your favor partly because she handily endures the antics of her oppressively loving family, who throw one big, fat, ouzo-soaked shindig.
The Conformist (1970)
In The Conformist, Bernardo Bertolucci’s breathtaking adaptation of Alberto Moravia’s novel, Marcello (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is seen, in one of many flashbacks, confessing his sins to a priest before marrying fiancee Giulia (Stefania Sandrelli)—an act that’s chief among his attempts to achieve normality and adhere to tradition. Tucked amid an elliptical film that’s legendary for its intoxicating imagery, the wedding scene is, to quote one of our own, “possibly one of the most brilliant sequences in film history.”
The Wedding Banquet (1993)
The rare farcical comedy to be directed by Ang Lee, The Wedding Banquet focuses on the travails of a gay Manhattan couple, Wai-Tung (Winston Chao) and Simon (Mitchell Lichtenstein), whose world is upended when Wai-Tung’s traditional Taiwanese parents insist on marrying him off. Aiming to keep up a ruse, the couple decide to have Wai-Tung marry the poor Wei Wei (May Chin), and the lie, as expected, leads to dramatic and hilarious ends. Unsatisfied with a courthouse affair, Wai-Tung’s mother insists on an extravagant event, resulting in the lavish titular banquet. Pregnancy, illness, and truth-telling ensue, as Lee eases toward a climax of bittersweet uplift.
The Deer Hunter (1978)
Michael Cimino’s harrowing masterwork, The Deer Hunter, begins, however solemnly and forebodingly, with its rare sequence of relative innocence, a wedding between Steven (John Savage) and Angela (Rutanya Alda). It’s a traditional Orthodox ceremony, and it’s flooded with the unease of the deployment of Steve and pals Nick (Christopher Walken) and Mike (Robert De Niro), not to mention Mike’s secret attraction to Nick’s girlfriend Linda (Meryl Streep). The capper to the event is blatant foreshadowing: Steve and Angela, as per tradition, drink wine from conjoined goblets, trying to score good luck by not spilling any drops, but a drop hits Angela’s lily-white gown. And it’s all downhill from there.
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)
A smattering of strapping brothers—all with names plucked from the Old Testament—magically enchant a group of gals they pick up at a barn-burner, and what follows is a feature-length musical rife with misunderstanding. Separated from the gals they just met, the gents proceed to kidnap them and leave town, an act that eventually wins the sweethearts over, but draws ire from fathers and townsfolk. To top things off, there’s a child in the mix, and the uncertainty of its paternity very famously leads to a shotgun wedding. It’s a rather transgressive culmination for such an otherwise tame endeavor, but its amply supplied with PG song and dance.
My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997)
Handpicked by Julia Roberts to helm her underrated vengeance vehicle, which flips the script to make the heroine and party-crashing villain one and the same, Muriel’s Wedding director P.J. Hogan waltzed down the aisle again for his American debut, the alternately naught and nice My Best Friend’s Wedding. The big affair itself, which Roberts’s character, Julianne, comes close to derailing, takes place on the vast Chicago estate of bride-to-be Kimmy’s (Cameron Diaz) rich family. Notable among the proceedings are a parade’s worth of balloons (great for helium-voiced sing-alongs), a well-endowed ice sculpture of David, and a reception that ends with Julianne in the arms of her GBF, George (Rupert Everett).
Father of the Bride (1950)
Not to be confused with the 1991 remake of the same name, Vincente Minnelli’s Father of the Bride sees Spencer Tracy in the Steve Martin role, and Elizabeth Taylor as the daughter whose impending marriage he can’t quite accept. Like its successor, Father of the Bride follows Stanley Banks (Tracy) as he comes to terms with this new stage, and eventually positions him as the mediator when the lovebirds themselves get cold feet. Telling the tale in flashback, Banks bookends the movie while sitting amid his party-ravaged home, which is riddled with the debris of his daughter’s happiness.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
James Bond gets married?!? That was the popular reaction to this largely-maligned Bond installment, the only one to feature George Lazenby in the leading role, and the only one to be directed by former Bond-series editor Peter R. Hunt. While in Portugal, 007 falls for Diana Riggs’s Contessa Teresa, and later marries her in a ceremony that ends with the couple driving off in Bond’s signature Aston Martin. Happiness is short-lived, though, as Teresa is killed soon after, gunned down in a drive-by shooting.
A Wedding (1978)
Robert Altman assembled yet another vibrant cast for A Wedding, his comedy tapestry about a marriage that joins a modest Southern clan with a rich family wrapped up in organized crime. Terrifically Altman-esque, the film characteristically overlaps its plot lines and its dialogue, scattering them among such actors as Carol Burnett, Lauren Hutton, Mia Farrow, Howard Duff, and Geraldine Chaplin. Altman confines his action to a single day, wherein the lush affair is backed by memorable music and builds to a melancholy-tinged finale.
Melancholia (2011)
Bridezillas don’t get much worse than Justine (Kirsten Dunst), the depressed fading star at the heart of Lars von Trier’s sweeping Melancholia. Seemingly blissful at the start of the film, which takes place on the vast estate of Justine’s sister (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and brother-in-law (Kiefer Sutherland), Justine proceeds to ruin a reception that cost her relatives countless dollars, and descend into a rut soon mirrored by a massive planet bound for Earth.
The Godfather (1972)
The Godfather opens with one of the most iconic weddings in all of cinema, a sprawling reception for Vito Corelone’s (Marlon Brando) daughter, Connie (Talia Shire). The celebration is abuzz with ultra-Italian merrymaking, music, and pink frocks, but, as always, business is undercutting the veneer, with Vito ushering his Marine Corps vet son, Michael (Al Pacino), into the family, and Vito aiming to get his godson, performer Johnny Fontaine (Al Martino), into an upcoming movie. When a studio head can’t be swayed by Vito’s pointman, Tom Hagen (Robert DuVall), he wakes up, unforgettably, with his prized horse’s head between his sheets. At least he didn’t sleep with the fishes.
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