Four Weddings and a Funeral

[TheBlueRobin]

Watched this film tonight, bit of a comfort film and love anything from Richard Curtis. What I hadn't really paid attention to before was how soon people got married? Lydia and Bernard after 3 months. Carrie and Hamish after a few months?

Was this more normal in the 90s or just a plot device? I'm getting married this year but was born in the 90s and been with my partner for nearly 8 years. Most of my cousins got married in the 90s in their early twenties after 1-2 years together.

Yabu - that was normal in the 90s
Yanbu - definitely unusual, people took longer to get married.

I still like it. I still like FWAAF too. I have no problem with having unfashionable tastes.

No, it was trite shite from the moment it plopped onto cinema screens. It makes Four Weddings and a Funeral look like Citizen Kane.

I like trite shite. No effort required. Perfect for watching while stuffed to the gills with Christmas dinner and awash with champagne.

We lived together for 3 years before getting married in 1991, engaged xmas day, married in the following August. Pretty standard i think.

I totally agree. I was really looking forward to seeing it at the cinema but I just didn't find it funny, interesting or entertaining. Apart from Rowan Atkinson's brilliant 5 mins or so

It's just so smug though & completely unfunny with very boring storylines full of unlikeable characters. 2 or so storylines are so pathetic I can't believe they got any further than the script writing. I refuse to ever have it on in my house. I do really like Hugh Grant as time has gone on & one day might even forgive him for this

It's a plot device, how else are they gonna fit four weddings in? It does happen but I don't think its the norm, everyone one i know was together for at least a few years before marriage.

I watched Citizen Kane recently though, and I thought that was shit! I'd rather be entertained with some genuinely funny moments ("Bride or groom?" "It should be perfectly obvious I'm neither") than pretentious twaddle. Horses for courses though - boring if we all liked the same stuff.

Also Hugh Grant is absolute eye candy. He was an unobtainable 15 or so years older than me when the film was released, and now I feel like a pervy old lady when I watch him!

Wasn’t uncommon in the 90s to go to several weddings over a summer.

I didn't mind 4 Weddings which is where your quote is from. I can't actually think of any funny quotes from LA

Yes but not usually of people who've only been together a few months

Best quote of Love Actually is when Bill Nighy calls Ant and Dec ‘ Ant or Dec’ and his quips about the free drugs.

It wasn’t, no. Those were expensive times! The only thing that’s unusual is that we see people going from getting together to marriage very rapidly, like Bernard and Lydia, or even Carrie and Hamish, if we assume Carrie was single the first time she slept with Charles. But plot device rather than realism.

My Aunts and Uncles definitely got married quick by today’s standards. Probably partly because my Gran didn’t believe in living in sin. I clearly remember my Aunt not telling her she’d moved in with her fiancé before the wedding.

Quite a few of my middle class friends got married after DC1 and before DC2. I think because of being mid thirties and aware of time being a premium!

My parents were married in the 80s within two years. DH and I were three years which felt quick for this day and age.

Angus and Laura had baby twins by the funeral so that must have been a year at least.

I also can't stand Carrie.

I got married in the 90s and we met / married after 6 months. It was pretty unusual at the time. Me and now DH married in 2020 after 13 years together.

I always quote ‘Ant or Dec’ whenever I see them. I genuinely don’t know is which is which.

I used to get Ant and Dec mixed up on their Saturday morning presenting days as well! They look so young in love actually. It is a funny little interlude.
The Bill Nighy character and his manager are the best ones in it along with Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman.

My DD favourite Love Actually quotes. ( Tpo be inserted into conversation where fit)

Eight is a lot of legs David
Just in cases
I look quite pretty ( in the voice)
I'm going for lunch,erm,early lunch
One night with Elton and you're as gay as a maypole
Yes. Ant or Dec

And not forgetting " Where the fuck is my fucking coat?"

Coming back to the point of the thread though
DH and I met in 1985, went through renting, buying a house in 1990, married 1995 , DS 1999, DD 2002.
So nothing as quick as an 18 month whirlwind. Definitely no DC before marriage though .

And Hugh Grant was and still is a handsome bloke !

My parents got engaged after three weeks and married at six months. Weddings did used to come a lot sooner. It started slowing down I think once it became more normal for people to live together before marriage. No one bats an eye at people living together with several kids unmarried these days where as it used to be a scandal.

My mother moved directly from her parents house into a shared flat with my dad the day she got back from her honeymoon.

I did like the scene in LA where the PM ( Hugh Grant) tells his new secretary that he can call up the SAS to deal with her ex who called her fat. ‘ Nice people but a phone call away ‘
’ move the Japanese ambassador to 2 o ‘clock’
( paraphrasing , but these scenes made me laugh )

None of them are funny though

Everyone looks young in LA (except Bill Nighy🤣)

There are more comedic scenes in LA than four weddings. Although I did like the Scottish man who sadly died and ended up having his service in a church in West Thurrock instead of a posh church in London. Overlooking the Dartford bridge and the gas works.