I re-watched The Wedding Planner on Saturday. This 2001 Romantic Comedy starring Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey is one of my favorite movies for a number of reasons.
1. There Are No Bad People
Both Steve, Matthew McConaughey’s character, and Mary, Jennifer Lopez’s character, are involved with other people yet these other people aren’t nasty or mean or undeserving of love. Mary genuinely likes Fran, Steve’s fiancée. She doesn’t fight with her, doesn’t say anything negative about her. There’s a mutual admiration and respect.
As reading and writing buddies know, I truly believe in women supporting other women. Many of my heroines have close female friends (Anna, Kat, and Camille, the heroines of He Watches Me, Flashes Of Me, and Breaking All The Rules, become best friends). Yes, there are some bad women in my stories but there are some bad men also. It takes skill to create a tension-filled story cast with nice people.
2. Both The Hero And The Heroine Are Imperfect
Mary doesn’t win the guy because she’s perfect. She wins the guy because they were meant to be together, her imperfections making her perfect for him. She’s a control freak and a bit obsessive. He’s a bit too casual about everything. She gives him structure. He teaches her to unwind.
I don’t write about perfect people. Perfect people are boring. My characters are rebels (Camille from Breaking All The Rules), rigid rule-setters (Nate from Breaking All The Rules), reality avoiders (Kat from Flashes Of Me), and obsessive cleaners (Bee from Sinful Rewards, releasing in July). These faults make them interesting.
3. There Are Some Great Quiet Moments
Romance, for me, isn’t the grand gestures or the roses or the poetic lines. It is when Steve gently, casually brushes the hair away from Mary’s face, when he kneels beside her as she’s lying on the couch, putting them both on the same level, when he sits beside her as they watch the movies in the park, neither of them needing to speak. I could picture him doing these things fifty years from now.
I like showing readers a slice of what the future might hold for couples. Years from now, Nate and Camille will be making dinner, dancing to music as their curry cooks. Kat will be sitting in Henley’s lap, watching surveillance footage with him. Blaine will be touching Anna under the tabletop at an important business dinner.
4. Not Everyone Is Paired Up At The End Of The Movie
The Wedding Planner has a happy romantic ending but it isn’t a happy romantic ending for everyone, only for Steve and Mary. It would have been so easy for the Director to pair everyone up, to force a happy ending for everyone, but that would have been, IMHO, cheesy and unrealistic.
I love to see everyone happy also so it is very challenging for me NOT to pair all of my characters up at the end of stories. It kills me that Yen, Camille’s boss, is alone. She deserves happiness also. But it would take an entire book dedicated to her to make that happy ending happen.
Have you watched The Wedding Planner? What did you enjoy about this movie?
Nathan Lawford, Blaine Technologies’ chief financial officer, is known as the Iceman. He conducts his personal and business affairs without emotion, never allowing himself to become involved with anyone. When Nate sees something or someone he wants, he negotiates, paying a simple, set monetary price.
Now he wants Camille, the company’s green-haired intern.
Camille Joplin Trent never expected to be paid to pleasure the man of her dreams. She can’t quite figure out why this is a bad thing. Nate is intelligent, handsome, sophisticated, everything she’s ever wanted in a lover and never thought she could have. Their contract is for a month, thirty lust-filled days of making every sexual fantasy they’ve ever had come true. At the end of this month, the rules state their relationship will end.
Of course, Camille has never been good at following rules.
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