An Attempt to Make Sense of the Jennifer Lopez Wedding Industrial-Complex Canon

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In honor of Jennifer Lopez’s This Is Me … Now: A Love Story, we’re rerunning our 2023 breakdown of the J.Lo wedding industrial-complex canon.

Few actors have pretended to get married as often as Jennifer Lopez. By my count, which has been duly confirmed by dozens of Us Weekly–core slideshows detailing her fictional wedding dresses, she has donned a white dress with the intention (but not always the follow-through) of betrothing herself to a man (always a man) no less than nine times: In Selena, The Wedding Planner, Enough, El Cantante, The Back-Up Plan, Marry Me, My Family, Shotgun Wedding, and The Cell, an extended metaphor for losing oneself in a marriage. In her latest, entirely self-funded effort, This Is Me … Now: A Love Story, she gets married at least three times, with a half-tongue-in-cheek segment dedicated to her lust for this particular activity. More interesting, though, is that four of these movies center entirely on the planning and execution of a modern American wedding, grappling not with the concept of matrimony but explicitly with the wedding industrial complex and its profound psychological implications.

If two is a coincidence, and three’s a pattern, then four is a cry for help. Lopez herself has been married four times, and engaged at least five, which means she may be cinema’s foremost expert on the material realities of putting together a wedding — a process, she recently told Jimmy Kimmel, that was so “stressful” it gave her “PTSD.” She’s also often a producer on her films, meaning she is in them as well as of them. In other words, we should listen to J.Lo when she makes four movies about women whose wedding planning nearly destroys their lives.

Within Lopez’s wedding-logistics cinematic universe, planning your nuptials inevitably turns you insane and unrecognizable. In the process, you will betray both the person you love and yourself, forgetting your core values the moment your tall white love interest slides a ring on your finger. Your mother or mother-in-law is often the enemy or the butt of the joke, and your best friend’s entire personality is “worried about how infrequently you get laid.” There is at least a 50 percent chance your fiancé is a doctor. Either you or he will wax poetic about how you or he “never wanted this” and “just wanted to get married on a beach in the middle of nowhere,” “just the two of you.” The wedding, its own sentient entity with a strong survival instinct, will lurch forward regardless. At one point, you will consider calling off the wedding, and sometimes, you will in fact call off the wedding. Sometimes the wedding will be back on, and sometimes it won’t, but don’t worry — there is an implicit promise that there is another, better wedding hiding in the intricately clipped hedges of the future.

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Viewed as a cohesive canon, and growing qualitatively frailer over time, Lopez’s wedding-planning films expose the charms and limitations of the genre — and of buying into the wedding industrial complex itself. Both experiences can be fun and diverting, even romantic, but when pushed too far, become stressful, repetitive, claustrophobic, and unimaginative, and offer diminishing returns, spawning lesser iterations of themselves across time like a series of increasingly glitchy, monstrously expensive clones. Indeed, Lopez’s invariable wedding filmography can be seen as meta commentary on the way weddings in the Anthropocene have all come to look and feel the same, hitting the required beats, sapped of inherent meaning, morphing instead into gaping, endless chasms into which we hurl our life savings so that we might, for a moment, forget that we are all marching toward death and in one hundred years nobody will remember our names.

Join me as I outline and attempt to make some sense of the J.Lo wedding industrial-complex canon and, in the process, our own desperate attempts at immortality.

The Wedding Planner (2001)

This is the urtext J.Lo wedding industrial-complex movie, wherein J.Lo’s entire life purpose is to plan weddings, a goal she has been working toward since she was a young child fake-marrying her Barbies. While it’s absurd to imply that event planning is some kind of fated higher calling, The Wedding Planner is the only movie on this list that truly works; it balances a healthy skepticism of “happily ever after” (and the movies that sell it to us) with true, swoony rom-com chemistry between Lopez and Matthew McConaughey and a tight, effective script. This movie rules.

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Who is the bride?

In this movie, we have several. Bridgette Wilson-Sampras is Fran, a careerist who is refreshingly not written as a dull serial killer, who’s meant to get married to her college sweetheart, Steve (McConaughey). But of course, as in all of these films, Lopez is also the bride. She plays Mary Fiore, an obsessive-compulsive but warm Italian wedding planner who likes to vacuum her walls and put a lot of gel in her ponytails. Her old-school father arranges for her to marry Justin Chambers’s Massimo, who used to stalk her as a child or something. But Mary is also a Schrödinger’s bride, trapped in a fraught, unconsummated lust affair with Steve, who wants to marry her instead of Fran. Alas, they cannot do anything about it, because she is already planning his wedding.

What’s her damage?

Mary has a dead mom, a dad obsessed with her marrying an Italian, and an ex-fiancé who made out with his high-school girlfriend at their wedding-rehearsal dinner.

To what extent is she a quietly and unbelievably good person? She plays Scrabble with the elderly.

But how sad are her dinners? She wears hard denim to sit down alone in front of the TV and eat a microwave meal.

And how is her job getting in the way of her wedding? As the wedding planner for her dream groom, Mary’s job is both responsible for and getting in the way of her quantum wedding.

Who is the groom?

McConaughey’s Dr. Steve is a hot pediatrician, the kind you’re always running into at the cancer hospital for kids. He is six feet tall.

So is he a white doctor of at least six feet tall? Yes.

What’s his damage?

Steve “has a hard time leaving people behind — he always does the right thing.”

To what extent is he a quietly and unbelievably good person? He give his child patients free rein to run around the hospital spying on people.

Does someone make a joke about him being secretly gay? Yes, Mary does, when he says he knows how to ballroom dance.

What kind of wedding is it?

Fran and Steve’s wedding is at Golden Gate Park; Mary and Massimo’s wedding is at the courthouse; Steve and Mary’s wedding is in a quantum superposition.

But did one of them picture a small wedding on a beach? Yes, Steve always imagined a wedding with “close friends and family on the beach.”

Who or what is ultimately trying to keep the bride and groom apart?

Long-standing social constructs are the only thing keeping Mary and Steve from tearing off each other’s clothes in the middle of the park.

Does the groom, at one point, mention that the bride is not acting like the woman he fell in love with? Steve mentions as much when he dumps Fran right before their wedding.

So what is the fundamental misunderstanding that almost ruins (or does ruin) the wedding? Fran and Steve do not really love each other, which they only understand right before their multimillion-dollar wedding commences. Massimo stalked Mary as a child and is a freak. And these prior engagements thwart Mary and Steve’s theoretical wedding.

Does the wedding get called off? Two of them are called off.

But does it then get called back on? No, these two weddings are not called back on, but the ever-possible and yet impossible third wedding of Steve and Mary is hinted at in the end, when they dance sensually under a tree. 

What is being telegraphed about the wedding industrial complex?

This movie was filmed and released pre-9/11, so it retains a ’90s hopefulness about both reality and the capitalist forces that animate it. The wedding industrial complex here does cause everyone to act rashly and weirdly, and millions of dollars are lit on fire when everyone just suddenly and casually calls their weddings off, day-of. But ultimately, the WIC gives Mary a sense of purpose and I guess is the sole thing responsible for her meeting her truest love, Dr. Steve.

Any specifically trenchant insights? “Love can’t always be perfect. Love is just love.”

 

Other Important Information:

Is the movie title a pun? Not at all, extremely literal.
Who is the mother or mother-in-law, and is she made a mockery of? Mary’s mother is dead — death, the greatest mockery of all. Steve’s mom is MIA, which is never explained. Fran’s mom is very rich and drunk all the time.
Who is the best friend, and is she worried? Yes, Judy Greer is very worried about J.Lo because she “hasn’t had a relationship in six years.”
How is Bali involved? Fran wants to import exotic trees from Bali for her ceremony.
Is there a machete somewhere, for some reason? Mary says, “What I’m thinking involves a machete and a pair of pliers.”
Does J.Lo perform? There’s no diegetic singing, but she dances twice — ballroom and tango. Then “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” plays during the credits.
Does somebody talk about J.Lo’s body in an unsettling way? “I’ve known her before she had breasts,” says Massimo. “Believe me, back then, she did not look so good.”
Does her love interest describe the exact color of her eyes? “I know every fleck of gold in your eyes.”
Is there a moment of physical comedy involving a near-death experience? Mary is nearly hit by a rogue dumpster in the street, and Steve saves her life.

Monster-In-Law (2005)

One year into Bush’s second term, we find a natural evolution of the JLOWICC, wherein the central question is not “will they, won’t they,” but “are older women inherently evil?” The premise — Lopez finds her perfect man, but his mom is a stone-cold psychopath trying to split them up — feels less “wedding industrial complex” and more “military industrial complex” in that it is designed to terrify young men out of the dating pool and into the army. Trapped in a script that hates them both, Jane Fonda and J.Lo do their best to save this movie, and at times even succeed, but unfortunately they can only do so much.

Who is the bride?

Instead of playing a San Francisco control freak obsessed with weddings, Lopez plays Charlotte, a.k.a. “Charlie,” a free-spirited, long-haired hippie in Los Angeles. She is a temp but secretly an artist. Her apartment is not meticulous but instead cluttered; she reads tarot cards and dogs’ horoscopes, wears color, and believes in signs. She has a yarn poncho.

What’s her damage?

She is an orphan with a free spirit and many food allergies (nuts, soy, blueberries).

To what extent is she a quietly and unbelievably good person? She finds a $20 on the ground and gives it to a barista.

But how sad are her dinners? Her gay best friend Adam Scott comes over and says, “Take-out or raid your fridge?”

And how is her job getting in the way of her wedding? A temp is a profession that the titular MIL, Viola (Fonda), a famous Barbara Walters–esque broadcast journalist, decides is unworthy of her doctor son. As a result, she sets about destroying Charlie’s life.

Who is the groom?

Dr. Kevin Fields, played by Michael Vartan. He bumps into Charlie at several of her temp gigs (dog walking, catering) and sweeps her off her feet.

So is he a white doctor of at least six feet tall? Yes.

What’s his damage?

Mama’s boy.

To what extent is he a quietly and unbelievably good person? He allows his mother to live with them despite the fact that she is a millionaire with several properties.

Does someone make a joke about him being secretly gay? Yes, early on in the film, Dr. Fields’s skinny blonde ex (Monet Mazur) tries to throw Charlie off his scent by insisting that he is a homosexual.

What kind of wedding is it?

One that takes place at Viola’s sprawling Los Angeles mansion.

But did one of them picture a small wedding on a beach? Yes, Charlie, who is on the beach constantly, would rather have a small wedding on the beach.

Who or what is ultimately trying to keep the bride and groom apart?

Jane fuckin’ Fonda. Her Viola is both the villain and the clown, a hard-core careerist who loses her post to a younger woman and then takes it out on Jennifer Lopez, faking a nervous breakdown, poisoning her, and recruiting a series of co-conspirators that include the aforementioned blonde ex, Wanda Sykes, and a fake psychologist. Viola’s own mother-in-law (Elaine Stritch in a fabulous cameo) is similarly awful, the implication being that as women age, they all become Medusa. J.Lo must break the cycle or be doomed.

Does the groom, at one point, mention that the bride is not acting like the woman he fell in love with? Yes, but to be fair, she begins engaging in near-fatal subterfuge with his mother, so it’s an accurate read.

So what is the fundamental misunderstanding that almost ruins (or does ruin) the wedding? Charlie decides she can’t be with Kevin because she can’t spend her whole life running from Viola’s murder attempts.

Does the wedding get called off? Almost — Charlie is about to tell Kevin she can’t marry him when …

But does it then get called back on? … Viola appears and apologizes for her behavior, and begs Charlie to carry on with the whole thing. Neither of them address the patriarchal structures that forced them into these false positions of competition and mutual acrimony and instead take on the individual responsibility of repairing millennia of misogyny and oppression.

What is being telegraphed about the wedding industrial complex?

It is a tool of manipulation for the very rich, a fun evening for the medium rich, and an escape hatch for the working-class.

Any specifically trenchant insights? “Call me old-fashioned, but marriage is a sacred union that should only be entered into with the utmost care.”

 

Other Important Information:

Is the movie title a pun? Weakly.
Who is the mother or mother-in-law, and is she made a mockery of? J.Lo’s mom is, again, dead.
Who is the best friend and is she worried? Adam Scott and Annie Parisse, who say they are “worried about her because she is not having sex.”
How is Bali involved? It is not.
Is there a machete somewhere, for some reason? There is not.
Does J.Lo perform? Stunningly, no.
Does somebody talk about J.Lo’s body in an unsettling way? “Aren’t you worried about fitting into your wedding dress?” asks Viola. “Kevin likes his women thin.”
Does her love interest describe the exact color of her eyes? “At first glance, they’re brown. But when the light hits them, they change to hazel. And if you look really closely in the iris, the color is pure honey. But when you look into the sun, they almost look green.”
Is there a moment of physical comedy involving a near-death experience? Viola deliberately feeds Charlie nuts the night before the wedding, almost sending her into anaphylactic shock.

Marry Me (2022)

I’ve now seen this movie twice and still can’t fundamentally wrap my head around it. I don’t understand its plot, nor its characters’ motivations, nor its version of reality. Everything that’s endearing about the first two wedding movies on this list has been eliminated from Marry Me and replaced with inorganic and upsetting substitutes; for example, one-third of this movie is filmed in an Instagram Live style. Moreover, its male protagonist is one of the most malevolent characters ever to grace a stage or screen.

Who is the bride?

 Jennifer Lopez is Kat Valdez, who is basically Jennifer Lopez.

What’s her damage?

She “always picks the wrong guy and can’t get out of her own way” because she was “raised by a single father who died before she saw any success.” Now she’s a woman north of 35 in a business that marginalizes women at any age. “People love their artists to bare their souls then vilify them if they go too far.”

To what extent is she a quietly and unbelievably good person? She helps her eventual paramour’s young, nervous daughter feel more confident at her math competition and donates all of her designer clothing to charity.

But how sad are her dinners? She juices and scrolls Instagram videos of herself.

And how is her job getting in the way of her wedding? Her job is being Jennifer Lopez, which makes it easy for her to get married to a pop star for publicity but hard to get married to anyone else.

Who is the groom?

Kat’s first groom is Bastian (Maluma), who is basically Maluma. The two plan to marry onstage at a livestreamed concert while premiering their new song, called “Marry Me.” But Bastian is revealed to be a cheater right before the wedding, so a bereft Kat looks into the audience, sees a rando math teacher named Charlie (played by Owen Wilson, and not to be confused with Charlie from Monster-in-Law — though I really miss her now) holding a sign that says “Marry Me” (it is his lesbian best friend’s sign that he is holding for a mere moment), and marries him because … I really don’t know why, and we never get a good explanation.

So is he a white doctor of at least six feet tall? He’s a white teacher and he’s only five-foot-ten.

What’s his damage?

God, where to begin. This incel-adjacent hypocrite spends 90 percent of the movie whining about how he is a better person than everyone around him because he has a shitty phone, doesn’t use social media, and goes to bed at 8 p.m. He has the charm of a cement basement, yet somehow the balls to insult Kat for doing paid partnerships to get her bag and opting to perform a professional duet with her ex-fiancé in order to increase her Grammy chances. Whoever wrote this character committed an act of psychological violence.

To what extent is he a quietly and unbelievably good person? He is an established agent of Satan.

Does someone make a joke about him being secretly gay? I can’t talk about him anymore.

What kind of wedding is it?

One that takes place on a stage in front of 20 million people.

But did one of them picture a small wedding on a beach? Yes, Kat says she wishes it were “just me and you on a beach somewhere.”

Who or what is ultimately trying to keep the bride and groom apart?

Bastian, a little bit, but mostly Charlie, by simply being himself.

Does the groom, at one point, mention that the bride is not acting like the woman he fell in love with? Yes, when she performs her new song so that she might finally get the awards and career validation she has been aching for her entire life.

So what is the fundamental misunderstanding that almost ruins (or does ruin) the wedding? Charlie nearly ruins his wedding by being an unrepentant monster who skips Kat’s performance with Bastian, then drives all the way to Madison Square Garden just to break up with her.

Does the wedding get called off? After Kat and Bastian’s is called off, it is nearly revived when Jimmy Fallon has them both on the show and asks them if they’re back together. Kat and Charlie’s prospective wedding seems like it won’t and should not happen, but then …

But does it then get called back on? Kat flies to Charlie’s math competition in Peoria, Illinois, and asks him to marry her, despite the fact that he has spent the entire movie shitting on her chosen profession and acting like a sleep-paralysis demon.

What is being telegraphed about the wedding industrial complex?

At one point, in front of reporters, Charlie goes off on a tangent about how marriage was historically a business deal wherein women were traded for donkeys. This is part of his explanation for why he married Kat onstage, and he chuckles as he says it. I think this movie was written as a quiet warning, actually. One last SOS flare, shot desperately into the dark sky.

Any specifically trenchant insights? “I think we’re just too different.” “What if we’re not?”

 

Other Important Information:

Is the movie title a pun? No. It is as hard-core and literal as this film.
Who is the mother or mother-in-law, and is she made a mockery of? Nobody seems to have parents in this movie. Briefly, Charlie talks about how his mom is dead. “Do you think she would have liked me?” asks Kat. “No. She would have loved you,” he says, then adds, his eyes narrowing and turning a glowing blood-red, “She might have questioned a few things. She was very self-sufficient.”
Who is the best friend, and is she worried? Sarah Silverman is Parker, the worried best friend of Charlie. She drags him to the Kat Valdez show because she is concerned he is no longer “fun” after his wife left him. (He is not.)
How is Bali involved? It is not.
Is there a machete somewhere, for some reason? Tragically, no.
Does J.Lo perform? Yes. Wait. That’s the whole point of this movie, actually; it’s that simple. I get it now that I am typing it. J.Lo does sound great!
Does somebody talk about J.Lo’s body in an unsettling way? One night, when Kat removes her extensions, Charlie stomps on them. “You’re beautiful without all of that,” he says.
Does her love interest describe the exact color of her eyes? No, he just describes the ways in which she is a failure.
Is there a moment of physical comedy involving a near-death experience? Kat takes a coach flight to Peoria.

 

Shotgun Wedding (2023)

Though the JLOWICC has been on a sharp downward trajectory since The Wedding Planner, Shotgun Wedding rights the plane, saving us from crashing directly into the ocean (upon which someone is probably having a wedding). This one takes on the wedding industrial complex as its primary subject, sort of inverting the premise of The Wedding Planner: What if a man planned a wedding … and then it was hijacked by pirates? It’s also a combination of J.Lo’s favorite genres: “wedding-planning rom-com” and “movie in which her character holds a gun.”

Who is the bride?

J.Lo is Darcy Rivera, a woman who is getting married and not that excited about it.

What’s her damage?

Her parents got divorced when she was in high school and they now hate each other. She had a failed first engagement with a boyfriend she met serving in the Peace Corps, played by Lenny Kravitz.

To what extent is she a quietly and unbelievably good person? She did Peace Corps.

But how sad are her dinners? The entire movie takes place over the course of approximately 24 hours, so we never see Darcy outside of this wedding. She does, however, briefly drink Champagne out of the bottle alone, which serves the same function as a “sad dinner alone” scene.

And how is her job getting in the way of her wedding? I genuinely don’t know what her job is, but it involves her having been in the Peace Corps at one point.

Who is the groom?

Josh Duhamel is a Minor League Baseball player named Tom, a character never seen before in these films: a groomzilla, so obsessed with planning the perfect wedding that he nearly loses the love of his life!! And that’s called feminism!

So is he a white doctor of at least six feet tall? He is a six-foot-four nondoctor, which is the tallest one so far.

What’s his damage?

Insecurity and Etsy addiction.  

To what extent is he a quietly and unbelievably good person? He is sensitive.

Does someone make a joke about him being secretly gay? Nobody has to — the movie’s joke is that he cares more about the wedding than she does, which is presented as an emasculating trait.

What kind of wedding is it?

It takes place on a small, private island in the Philippines.

But did one of them picture a small wedding on a beach? Despite the fact that they are in fact having a small wedding on a beach, Darcy still says she wishes they were “on a boat, just the two of us.”

Who or what is ultimately trying to keep the bride and groom apart?

Darcy’s ex-boyfriend Lenny Kravitz, who spends the entire movie being Lenny Kravitz–y (no shirt, etc.).

Does the groom, at one point, mention that the bride is not acting like the woman he fell in love with? Nay, the opposite! Darcy tells Tom, “The last few months you’ve turned into a different person.” He replies, “I’m sorry, I just wanted everything to be perfect.” And that’s … called feminism.

So what is the fundamental misunderstanding that almost ruins (or does ruin) the wedding? Darcy and Tom get into a huge fight after the pirates hold their guests hostage, but not about the pirates holding their guests hostage — it’s about how Tom is a different person than who she fell in love with.

Does the wedding get called off? Yes, Darcy hurls her engagement ring at Tom in the midst of the hostage crisis.

But does it then get called back on? Yes, after they successfully murder a ton of pirates and it reminds them why they fell in love in the first place.

What is being telegraphed about the wedding industrial complex?

Men are as capable of being seduced by the siren song of Wedding Capitalism as women. And that’s … called … feminism.

Any specifically trenchant insights? “I thought if we had the perfect wedding, we’d have the perfect marriage. But that doesn’t exist.”

 

Is the movie title a pun? Theoretically, yes, but the wedding isn’t actually a shotgun wedding; it’s a normal wedding planned by people who have been together for several years. So it only functions on one level (there is a shotgun at the wedding).
Who is the mother or mother-in-law, and is she made a mockery of? Jennifer Coolidge steals the movie, as usual, as Josh Duhamel’s mom, who gives Darcy a rusty knife for her “something borrowed.” Darcy’s mom is more of the villain here, complaining about her father’s new girlfriend and being generally unpleasant. If you’re keeping track, so far nobody’s mom or mother-in-law has been both normal and alive.
Who is the best friend, and is she worried? Darcy appears to have no real friends. We only see her interact with various chaotic family members, Tom, and pirates.
How is Bali involved? They wanted to get married in Bali, where Darcy did her infamous time in the Peace Corps, but it was too expensive. Also, the pirates are from Bali.
Is there a machete somewhere, for some reason? The pirates have them.
Does J.Lo perform? At the end, she sings “Walk Like an Egyptian” onstage at her wedding.
Does somebody talk about J.Lo’s body in an unsettling way? Jennifer Coolidge walks in on her changing and says, “You look so much better than the rest of us. Is that genetics or Pilates or … ?”
Does her love interest describe the exact color of her eyes? Nope.
Is there a moment of physical comedy involving a near-death experience? The entire movie is this.