The Wedding Date

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source: imdb.com

“A wedding is a sacrament; a joyous celebration of love and commitment, in utopia. In the real world, it’s an excuse to drink excessively and say things you shouldn’t say.” –Nick Mercer (The Wedding Date, 2005)

“I’d rather fight with you than make love with anyone else.” –Nick Mercer (The Wedding Date, 2005)

“The hardest thing is loving someone and then having the courage to let them love you back. But if you know her shit and she knows yours, and at the end of the day, if you still would rather give up than try, nothing’s ever going to be worth it. Maybe think about it this way, you go back, you get to spend the rest of your life having really great make up sex.” –Nick Mercer (The Wedding Date, 2005)

Title                : The Wedding Date
Director           : Clare Kilner
Starring           : Debra Messing, Dermot Mulroney, Amy Adams
Genre              : romance, drama, comedy
Distributor       : Universal Studios
Release date    : 4 February 2005
Running time    : 90 minutes

"The Wedding Date" movie poster - source: imdb.com

It’s only the third post for Moments Of Our Lives part 2, yet I already write the second movie review. Well, count it as an excuse for not posting any movie review at all during the first part. So, wedding. How do you feel about a thing called ‘wedding’? (Wait, is that a thing? Okay, never mind!) What do you think about wedding? Some people say it’s a celebration of love; a sacred moment when two love birds make a vow to be together until death do them apart. While some others say it’s just a tool to strangle the person you think you’re in love with in a commitment for life. Wow, okay, the latter one sounds creepy, pardon me for that. But, any way it is that you prefer to think about a wedding, everyone should, no, must, be happy at a wedding. No matter how hectic it must be during the preparation (especially if you’re the bride or the groom or a family member), no matter how uninterested you are for it (especially when you’re a single, well, wedding sucks for some single people out there), everyone must be happy at a wedding.

source: imdb.com

At least for the sake of the bride and groom, and that’s what Kat Ellis (portrayed by Debra Messing) trying to do at her younger half sister’s wedding; be happy. Kat is a single New Yorker who returns to her parents’ house in London to be the maid of honor at the wedding of her younger half sister, Amy Ellis (portrayed by Amy Adams). However, the best man of Amy’s groom-to-be, Edward Fletcher-Wooten (Jack Davenport), is none other than Kat’s former fiancé, Jeffrey (Jeremy Sheffield), who unexpectedly dumped her two years ago without any reasonable cause. Anxious about confronting Jeffrey (and also eager to impress him at the same time), Kat hires suave escort Nick Mercer (portrayed by Dermot Mulroney) to pose as her boyfriend, as her wedding date. Therefore the two flies together from New York to London as a fake couple. While Kat is full of anxiety, on the other hand Nick is so relax and convinces her that everything is going to be just fine.
Kat intends to make Jeffrey jealous, but her plan backfires when Nick convinces everyone, including herself, that they are madly in love. Slow but sure, Kat doesn’t feel any anxiety or even care anymore for Jeffrey, as she finds herself falling for Nick. Meanwhile, breaking all the rule of his sidejob as an escort, Nick also finds himself slowly falling for Kat too. The two even start to fight and make up like a real couple. But then, only two days prior to the wedding, Nick discovers a fact that Amy and Jeffrey had an affair when Kat and Jeffrey were still together; and that was the reason Jeffrey broke his engagement with Kat two years ago, because he believed he was in love with Amy, yet, Amy turned Jeffrey down and chose to be with Ed because she loved him. Amy begs Nick to stay away from it as she has a plan to tell Kat herself about the affair. However, Jeffrey spills it out to Kat on the night before the wedding day, spoiling the mood for everyone.

source: imdb.com

When Kat finds out that Nick had already discovered Amy-Jeffrey’s affair (and not telling her), she feels betrayed and puts Nick off. And that’s when Nick says to Kat, “Go ahead, Kat, hate me. I think you’re running out of steam on this whole Jeffrey thing anyhow. Maybe now you’ll be able to hold on to this long enough to ruin your next relationship.” Well, it sounds pretty rude, I know. But that’s the ugly truth. “Every woman has the exact love life she wants.” Again, a quote by Nick. And again, that’s the ugly truth. We’re not just being single and miserable unless we, whether unconsciously or not, want ourselves to be single and miserable. When we’re ready to let go, to be un-single and un-miserable, we will. Instead of the matter of time, it’s more about the matter of willingness. In Kat’s case, when she decides to hire Nick as her fake boyfriend, she hasn’t moved on, clearly. And when she shuts Nick off just because of one simple mistake, and actually, more because of Amy-Jeffrey’s affair, she unconsciously chooses to not moving on.
However, meeting Nick makes Kat realizing all of that. That she shouldn’t push Nick away just because of her sadness and disappointment toward the past. That she should clear her mind from the haunting past relationship before she decides to move on and continue with the new relationship. When we’re in relationship, we should be dealing with the problems that come afterward, not the problems that we bring along from the previous relationship. There’s no such thing as out of the blue, and Jeffrey must have his reason for breaking their engagement. It’s not that Kat couldn’t find it out back then, but it’s just that she didn’t want to. Because, deep in her conscious mind, she wanted to be miserably broken. The same thing goes for Amy. If she didn’t mean to hurt her sister, then why did she choose to betray her? Because, deep in her conscious mind, she wanted to hurt her. Perhaps she’s jealous, because Kat is the one who always the most and number one. Well, everyone needs a drama.
source: imdb.com

A drama; the more complicated it is, the merrier. Fortunately, everyone still has enough sanity to make it right in the end. “Every woman has the exact love life she wants.” And thank God, Kat realizes it before it’s too late. Instead of being drowned in grief because she thinks her relationship with Nick is already over and he is already leaving, she chooses to run for it. At this point, she has totally moved on. And more importantly, she won’t repeat the same old mistake she did with Jeffrey back then. She’s not running away anymore when she can ask for explanation and make a negotiation. A relationship is love with negotiation, indeed. Nick, meanwhile, has enough sanity to choose to stay; to make himself understand Kat’s emotional condition. She has been deeply hurt anyway, and it’s not easy for someone like her to open up her heart again. Therefore he decides to give her and himself one more chance. Everything will work out because they want to work it out. The same thing goes for Amy and Ed.
I’m glad Amy gathers up her courage to tell the truth to Ed before their wedding. That’s what she must do, though, but I know that’s not easy. So, still, she got my salute. Kat says to Nick, before she takes him to meet her family, “You know those families where everyone’s out of their minds, but at the end of the day they’re you family, so you love them? Mine’s not like that.” Although she says that her family isn’t like that, the truth is a total opposite. In the end, Amy does the right thing (beside for the sake of her relationship with Ed) for the sake of her relationship with Kat. Nevertheless, they’re sisters. She might be out of her mind, but she understands completely that Kat is her family. And deep in her conscious mind, she loves her. Ed, on the other hand, has enough sanity to forgive Amy, to see it in himself that he loves Amy more than he is angry, to realize that the mistake is all in the past. And I believe that they who choose to stay after all, are the ones truly worth fighting for. I’ll say it all over again, ones find love when they find themselves. And once upon a time at a wedding, two people find themselves through each other.

source: imdb.com

“The Wedding Date” is based on the novel titled “Asking for Trouble”, written by Elizabeth Young. This romantic comedy film was a financial success, despite receiving mostly negative reviews from critics. It was even remade in Bollywood under the title “Aap Ki Khatir”, which also performed well at box office. It’s not the first time a movie with poor critics reception meets my fondness. Hell yeah, I won’t blame you to call me cheesy and sentimental. I must say that Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney play Kat and Nick characters very well (not to mention that Mr. Mulroney is freaking hot in as Nick!). And also, Amy and Ed couple is played well too by Amy Adams and Jack Davenport. They surely don’t lose their light even just as supporting characters. Oh yeah, and also the trouble-maker asshole, Jeffrey, I have to say that Jeremy Sheffield does a great job for making me hate this character so much. Well done with the characters, anyway. And if you love to watch romantic comedy, then “The Wedding Date” should be on your list.


Kat: “You know what pisses me off? I’ve been spilling my guts all weekend and I don’t know a thing about you.”
Nick: “I'm allergic to fabric softener. I majored in comparative literature at Brown. I hate anchovies. And I think I’d miss you even if we never met.”
(The Wedding Date, 2005)

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