Movies to Watch Before Your Wedding
What to watch with your partner, your bridesmaids and your parents, which films help when the planning gets too much, and which to save until after the honeymoon.
Somewhere in the middle of wedding planning, usually between the seating chart and the third conversation about the band, most couples need a night off. A film is the easiest one there is: two hours on the sofa, no decisions, and the reassurance that other people’s weddings, even fictional ones, have gone far more wrong than yours will. The right movie can also do something more useful. It can start a conversation you haven’t found a way into, with your partner, your friends or your parents, about what this day and this marriage mean. Here is what to watch, and with whom. Every title links to its entry in our wedding movies directory.
With your partner
The best films for a couple are the ones that look past the wedding day to the marriage.
Palm Springs traps a wedding guest and the bride’s sister in the same day, over and over, at a desert wedding. It is very funny about reception rituals and surprisingly tender about what it means to choose someone for every tomorrow, not just the one you’ve planned.
About Time is Richard Curtis’s gentlest film: a young man who can revisit moments of his own life falls in love, marries and discovers that the ordinary days matter most. Watch it the week you write your vows; our guide to writing wedding vows will help with the rest.
Up opens with Carl and Ellie’s wedding and a wordless montage of their life together. Have tissues nearby.
The Philadelphia Story is the sophisticated choice: Hepburn, Grant and Stewart in a wedding-weekend comedy that asks what we should expect of the people we marry.
With your bridesmaids
A bridesmaids’ movie night, perhaps at a shower or the night of a dress fitting, is a tradition in itself. Choose films about friendship first.
Bridesmaids is the obvious and correct choice: a maid of honor’s rivalry with the bride’s glamorous new friend, and a funny, honest look at the fear that a wedding will change a friendship. If your wedding party includes both old friends and new ones, it may start a useful conversation. Our guide to choosing bridesmaids covers the rest.
Muriel’s Wedding is sharper and sadder, but its ABBA soundtrack and its great friendship at the center make it a favorite for a group.
Mamma Mia! is pure sing-along. Serve Greek food, print lyrics if you must.
Veere Di Wedding follows four school friends reuniting in Delhi for the wedding of one who isn’t sure she wants to marry at all. It is glamorous and frank, and a fine choice for a mehndi-week night in.
27 Dresses is for anyone who has stood up at more weddings than they can count. The montage of one bridesmaid at two weddings on the same night is its best joke.
With your groomsmen
The Best Man is the grown-up choice: old college friends gathering in New York for a wedding, and a novel that might reveal too much. The Wood is warm and funny about a groom who goes missing on his wedding day and the friends who find him. Wedding Crashers is the crowd-pleaser, and The Hangover is the cautionary tale for any bachelor party. If he is also giving the toast, send him our guide to wedding toasts first.
With your parents
Some of the most important conversations of an engagement are with parents, and some are easier to begin after a film.
Father of the Bride (1991), with Steve Martin and Diane Keaton, is the family favorite: funny about the budget, touching about a father’s sadness. The 1950 original, with Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor, is gentler and a good pick for grandparents. Both are worth watching before the conversation about who pays for what.
Late Spring, Ozu’s great film about a daughter who does not want to leave her widowed father, is the most tender film ever made about the parent left behind. It is quiet, subtitled and devastating in the best way.
Monsoon Wedding is a joy for any family planning a big wedding with relatives arriving from around the world. It is funny and warm, but it has a serious family secret at its heart, so it is best for adult children and their parents rather than the whole clan.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! are for the whole family, including the aunts. Both celebrate the moment two families become one, loudly.
Fiddler on the Roof is long, but its wedding and “Sunrise, Sunset” are guaranteed to reach any parent in the room.
When the planning gets too much
When you are tired of making decisions, watch someone else fail spectacularly at theirs.
C’est la vie! follows a veteran caterer through one long, disastrous night at a château wedding. It is the best film about the people who work at weddings, and you will never complain about your vendors in quite the same way.
Plaza Suite ends with a bride who locks herself in a hotel bathroom while her parents try every tactic to coax her out. It is a comic reminder that nerves are normal.
The Wedding Singer is simply cheering, with an excellent 1980s soundtrack.
The Catered Affair, with Bette Davis and Ernest Borgnine, is the most honest film about the wedding budget ever made: a Bronx family nearly breaks itself apart over the cost of a big reception. It will make you feel better about yours.
Band Baaja Baaraat is a romantic comedy about two young Delhi wedding planners, and a cheerful tour of every kind of Indian wedding, from modest to spectacular.
When you need a good cry
Weddings stir up big feelings, and sometimes the only thing to do is let them out.
Steel Magnolias begins with the happiest wedding morning on film and becomes a story of friendship and loss. Watch it with your mother.
Little Women, Greta Gerwig’s version, includes Meg March’s modest wedding and a sister’s plea to run away before it. It is about sisters, growing up and choosing your own life.
Laapataa Ladies is a comedy, but its story of two brides swapped on a crowded train will move anyone who has thought about what a bride gives up and what she might want.
Save these for after the honeymoon
Some great wedding films are not what you want the week before your own. Melancholia is a masterpiece about a wedding reception that collapses under a bride’s depression. Ready or Not is a horror comedy in which the new in-laws hunt the bride. Rachel Getting Married includes the most painful rehearsal-dinner toast in film. And The Graduate ends with the most famous interruption of all. All four are brilliant, and all four are better enjoyed as a married couple.
How to host a wedding movie night
Pick a double bill. Pair an old film with a new one: the 1950 and 1991 Father of the Bride, or The Philadelphia Story with its musical remake, High Society.
Theme the food lightly. Spanakopita for My Big Fat Greek Wedding, something pink for Steel Magnolias, chaat for Monsoon Wedding.
Don’t watch the night before. Sleep matters more than a final viewing of your favorite. Make it a week or two out, or part of a shower or bachelorette weekend.
Mind the audience. Several of these films carry serious subjects, including grief, abuse and addiction. Check the directory notes before choosing a film for grandparents or a mixed group.
Take notes. More than one couple has found a first-dance song, a reading or a toast idea in a favorite film. When you do, our first dance song library is the next stop.
For more, see the 30 best wedding movies of all time and the greatest wedding scenes.
Written and edited by the Today’s Weddings editors. How we research and check what we publish is set out in our editorial standards. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.
