This week, my wife and I celebrate ten years (10!! ten. YEARS.) of marriage. It’s a milestone Baby Marion never thought I’d reach, because, until I met my wife, I never thought I’d get married. That doesn’t mean I didn’t consume a ton of wedding media, though; nor that I didn’t absolutely love and internalize some of that media. So, in Baby Marion’s honour, and to commemorate this sincerely joyous occasion, here are ten cinematic weddings that have lived in my heart since first I saw them.

Calling it now: this is the most breathtakingly beautiful entry on the list. You’re not necessarily rooting for the marrying couple here, because they’re intentionally not very interesting or complicated. They’re just rich people propaganda—extremely hot and generically likable, so their obscene wealth feels justified. But, thanks to that obscene wealth, this wedding is simply stunning, to the point that it elicits a Spectacle Cry. By the time the bride steps into the water (why did they flood the venue? SPECTACLE!), you’re too caught up in the magic to care that you don’t know anything about her besides that she loves yelling into a megaphone. May we all be so crazy rich.

This is one of those classic double weddings in which it’s generally understood that the most important relationship here is the one between the two straight women. If Marilyn Monroe’s Lorelai weren’t such an unrepentant gold digger (laudatory; and, technically, she’s more of a diamond miner) and Jane Russell’s Dorothy weren’t so horny for men, they would’ve left the grooms out altogether. Alas, the comphet ‘50s! Still, the ladies walk each other down the aisle in identical wedding dresses, and most of the shots intentionally crop out their male partners as the two gaze at each other with giddy excitement. So, it’ll do.

This movie is deeply important to me, in part as a helpful and hopeful companion after I lost my job this year. But it’s also a haunting cautionary tale about priding yourself on self-sufficiency over connection, and a sneak love letter to the kind of cozy, unglamourous love that all of us could stand to be more grateful for. George Clooney’s baby sister1 is marrying Danny McBride2, and in lieu of gifts, they asked their people to photograph a cardboard cutout of the two of them in different locations. The Cloons spends his time annoyed by this task, and at how the cutout doesn’t fit neatly into his sleek carry-on. When he finally arrives at the wedding and sees the end result—a map full of photos of the happy couple, standing in for the trips they can’t afford to take—he realizes what a loving village the two of them have. And, heartbreakingly, what a small role he’s allowed himself to play in that village.

My favourite romcom of all time, with a heroine who is going progressively deranged over the course of the film. In my youth, this movie struck a deep chord with me because I was always the Jules with the boys I had crushes on, in that we had more in common and I have an enormous laugh, but they’d always date the sweet, pretty girl who was nothing like me. The crème brûlée to my Jell-O, even. But as an adult, it strikes a deep chord because Jules’s freefall is less because she’s in love with her best friend3, and more because she’s processing him choosing a life path that will necessarily change their relationship. They’re not young anymore4, and their stories about all the drunken fun they have together are all in the past. Which is why her new best friend George showing up at her outgoing best friend’s wedding to remind her that maybe there won’t be marriage, maybe there won’t be sex, but by god there’ll be dancing, is the perfect ending to a lovely and spiky movie.

I know that Hitch got reappraised as a movie about pick-up artistry back when we were reappraising all the romcoms, but I’m reclaiming this one, dammit. Especially since so much of Hitch’s advice to his clients is about listening, seeking consent, and showing interest. And since Hitch’s own lesson—that you can’t expect anyone to play it cool when they’re falling in love—plays out very simply and joyously. The transition from Hitch instructing Kevin James5 to keep his elbows pinned to his side when he dances, to the two of them and their loves doing the goofiest Soul Train line imaginable at a wedding, gets me every time. I also just love that Will Smith has never been a very good dancer, and appreciate them working that in as a subplot.

I’m picking the saddest wedding of the four for this one, but I promise it’s for good reason. Yes, watching Andie MacDowell knowingly marry the wrong man is bewildering. Yes, the funeral-necessitating death of a beloved character does happen at the reception, and it’s genuinely awful. But for one thing, Hugh Grant’s adorable roommate Scarlett meets her soulmate in a charmingly horny little moment (“actually, it’s Chester.” “…you’re lovely.”). And for another, Hugh Grant’s best friend and Cool Girl Extraordinaire Fiona (played by Cool Girl Extraordinaire Kristin Scott Thomas) gives one of my top 2 Doomed Declarations of Love to a Best Friend in cinema history. It’s the way her face falls when she realizes she’s confessed her feelings out loud, and now has to commit to them. It’s the tragedy of “friends isn’t bad, you know. Friends is quite something.” And it’s the loving commiseration that said best friend reacts with: “it’s not at all easy, is it?” This scene is simply everything to me, and the fact that it takes place at a hideous wedding just adds to the bittersweetness of it all.

Marilyn’s second film on this list, lovergirl that she is! But this time, it isn’t her wedding, since we don’t even get to see that one. It’s the non-wedding of her roommate, Lauren Bacall’s Schatze, who opened the movie announcing her plan for at least one of the three roommates to, well..

Since Schatze is literally Lauren Bacall, she bags herself an elegant and elderly millionaire, the type of self-aware and selfless rich man who only exists in the movies (see also: Cameron Diaz’s dad in My Best Friend’s Wedding, the dad in It Takes Two). But she’s actually in love with Tom, a more age-appropriate man she immediately writes off as poor because, in so many words, she wants to fuck him. She holds the line against her feelings until she’s at the altar, at which point she simply says “please” to her groom and inexplicably, hilariously fakes a limp back on up the aisle. Her gallant groom goes to find Tom, to let him know that Schatze (1) does love him, and (2) doesn’t know that Tom is worth something like a billion dollars. Again, that’s Lauren Bacall for you.

Shockingly, Andie MacDowell is back on the list! I am actually an Andie MacDowell defender, though, so I suppose it’s not that shocking. And, unlike with Four Weddings, she is the reason Ready Or Not is on my list. As family matriarch Becky, she seeks out Samara Weaving’s Grace to give her a sweet pep talk about the two of them not having blue enough blood to hang with the generationally wealthy Le Domas family that Grace is now marrying into. “Stand tall, and fuck ‘em,” she purrs regally. It’s a nice little moment of kindness and commiseration that gives their later, more antagonistic scenes some real zip.

Unshockingly, my romcom queen Julia Roberts is back on the list too. As with most of Julia’s romcoms, Runaway Bride is explicitly preoccupied with her sex life. By the time her Maggie is walking down the aisle to meet Richard Gere’s Ike, she’s left three men at the altar and one man at the rehearsal altar. Alas, Ike turns out to be failed attempt number five, as Maggie runs out of the wedding and leaps onto a FedEx truck. And it’s this exchange between Rita Wilson and Hector Elizondo that cements this specific wedding’s place in my top 10:

The wedding in Up only gets about ten seconds in the famous (infamous?) Married Life sequence at the top of the movie, but it’s such an exuberant ten seconds. This sequence is a gorgeous illustration of all of the highs and lows of married life—the dreams, the disappointments, and the everyday magic—and, being ten years into married life myself, I also find it an extremely accurate illustration. That it starts with bride Ellie leaping to kiss groom Carl, so excited to start their life together, feels extremely accurate to my experience as well. Ten years in, I’m feeling just as excited.

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