I’m watching four weddings and a funeral

[Frynye]

I’m watching four weddings and a funeral for the first time since I was about 15 and I have questions. When did everyone stop wearing hats to weddings and why are so many people (Carrie mainly) wearing white to weddings

Watched it for the first time today, in my 40s. Stubbornly refused when I was younger. But I thought Fiona was awful, saying first bride looked like a meringue, calling Hen duck face etc. Seemed bitter and unpleasant.
But Gareth and Matthew being a couple totally didn't pick up on it, till Charles and Tom were talking afterwards.
Andie McDowell was awful, only decent thing she's done was Maid on Netflix

I had a couple of friends training to be priests when this film came out. Rowan Atkinson's seminarian/newly qualified priest portrayal was all the more funny for watching it with one of them and saying 'that'll be you soon' (thankfully my friend didn't have a load of bishops on the altar when he did his first wedding)!

First time I watched it I thought Gareth and Matthew were father and son until the funeral.
DH still takes the piss out of me.

I’m watching on Netflix now 😍

It’s very subtle. If you don’t notice the shaving cream thing.

Always wondered how Carrie & the much older Scottish guy ( can’t remember his name) got together. Hamish, that was it.

I couldn't figure out why she married him either as she didn't exactly seem so poor that she needed his money. And was she with him at the start or did she meet him between weddings 1 and 2?

Why did Charles attend Carrie’s wedding? Couldn’t ever work that out

Why were any of them at Carrie’s wedding? She was a stranger at wedding 1

Because the plot required it? I mean, it’s mad all round. It’s deeply peculiar that not only does she invite Charles, a virtual stranger she has met at two previous weddings and slept with twice, but also his entire friendship group. We know she was on the same table as Gareth and Matthew at one of the previous weddings, so at least they talked at some point, but she appears never to have met Charles’s brother until the post-wedding-dress-buying trip where she meets him at the BFI and tells him he should come to the wedding too, because it would make up for ‘all the gruesome stiffs Hamish knows’. (While he’s making pervy comments about her tits, but we’re supposed to think it’s cute and funny because it’s in BSL.)

And so an entire bunch of people trek off to Scotland from London/Home Counties to attend the wedding of two total strangers. And it’s not that a bunch of them just pile into Charles’s car for support or anything, as they’re already in the church at the ceremony by the time he arrives, and have c,early travelled separately.

Could Carrie have known at least some of the friendship group before the first wedding?

We said the same when we watched it recently. She was a guest at the first 2 weddings....but those 2 couples didnt seem to be at hers....whereas Charles and friend group were...?

It’s almost like they made the whole thing up.

My favorite review of this film referred to Andie McDowell as “she of big gums and little talent.” Very fitting.

I feel like wearing white to a wedding is more of an issue now because the clothes worn by the bride and the guests have got a lot closer to each other in style. A bride might wear a slinky open back satin dress (not a big meringue) and so might her guests (not a skirt suit and blouse). So if the guests wear white it's a bigger risk they'll be confused with the bride. There isn't much chance of that in eg the first wedding in the film where the bride is a meringue and Carrie is in a skirt suit with I believe a grey skirt and that big black hat.

Well, Mners wouldn’t just have an issue with Carrie wearing white to a wedding, but also with Fiona habitually wearing black!

(I wear black to weddings a lot and have never excited the smallest remark or second glance, but Mn appears addicted to a ‘It brings bad luck’, and ‘It implies you disapprove of the marriage’ philosophy, and I believe I’ve also seen it suggested on here that wearing red to a wedding is signalling that you’ve slept with the groom…?)

In which case Charles should have been clad in his best Scarlet Harlot suit at Carrie and Hamish’s wedding…

I got married in 1996 and a few people asked for “permission” to wear white at my wedding which I thought was odd that they felt they needed permission but then my bridesmaids were in ivory so I wasn’t precious. I remember a couple of comments from middle aged/older relatives expressing surprise on my colour choice for the bridesmaids and guests wearing white/ivory.

The majority of female guests wore hats at my wedding. The last time I wore a hat to a wedding was 2002, I’ve noticed that they seem more unusual these days which is why I’ve stopped wearing them. The dress code seems more relaxed these days too.

Rewatching it now after many years and the scene with Charles witnessing Bernard and Lydia is so funny. Also, David Haig more or less still looks exactly the same as he did there!

And who would go for a wedding list with an average price of £1000 per gift??

I could not agree with you more. Should have been amazing, it's actually horrific.

That dreadful line from the posh older guy in the bar reminiscing about school "Tremendous man. Head of my house. Buggered me senseless, but it taught me about life! " How was that funny, even then?

Good point. And as a PP said, David commenting on Carrie's breasts in BSL while she's standing right there is a bit grim too.

Fiona seems to already know Carrie, or at least know who she is, as Charles asks her about Carrie at the first wedding - "Pretty." "American" "Interesting" "Slut".

I run an art gallery nowadays, and would love to say "lots of beautiful things around the £1000 mark". That would probably be 2k today. I did sell a painting for £400 last weekend though.

Imagine the AIBU if you were invited to a wedding with a gift list at a "lovely things around the £1000 mark" store? MN would consider it the height of cheeky fuckery!

I watched sex, lies and videotape with Andie MacDowell a couple of days ago and had a new take on the rain comment in 4 weddings which irritates everyone, in the videotape film she says she thinks it's going to rain soon and the James Spader character says it already is.

So it might have been written into 4 weddings as a reference to it