Wedding Week: Father of the Bride (1991)

11 months ago

Wedding Week: Father of the Bride (1991)

I’M NOT A GUY THAT’S BIG ON CHANGE

by Danielle Lee

I have the Instant Nostalgia disease. This one time, a few weeks ago, I had this wildly romantic affair. Except… without the romance. Or the really, truly liking each other part.

But why would I let boring rationality wipe the Vaseline off this warped, soft-focus lens into the near past? Why, when I can endlessly torture myself with a sick fixation on those few great moments?

Go ahead, give me a first date where we smiled cordially over a few beers before shaking hands goodbye and in my mental post-production studio I’ll soundtrack some sweeping aria over all the parts where he’s listing his medications or grand plans to move out of his parents’ house (this happened).

Not always. And not for very long. But sometimes my restless mind will cling to these few standout images, smells or solicitations for friends’ open couches.

It’s how some of us cope with an uncertain future. Steve Martin, as George Banks in Father of the Bride, gets me.

So gobsmacked by the news of his 22-year-old daughter’s engagement upon her return from studying abroad, he envisions Little Girl Annie making the announcement. And nervous breakdown commences.

So maybe his nostalgia isn’t as instant as my Netflix method of watching him recount the glory days of his daughter’s adolescence, but transport him to Now and he’d totally be weeping all over a 65-picture Flickr album titled: Annie: 2 years 5 mos. :-P

He selfishly can’t bear to be replaced as the man in her life. He also admits to hating change. And boasts about the way the house looks with Christmas lights. And instructs his kids not to throw anything away.

I’m not saying there’s a special place for him in A&E Primetime. If anything, an audition tape from that time in junior high when I kept a ripped, green sparkly thumbnail tragically lost in a YMCA basketball practice would trump the mothball-ridden suit he initially insists on transitioning from the attic to altar. Plus, he’s got Diane Keaton as wife Nina to keep him in line.

I had my dad, whose biannual dumping of all the contents of my room into a central pile was my only begrudging catalyst for finally trashing the collection of notes Mom used to leave in my elementary school lunch bags.

Which brings me to my dad, the calm, collected contrast I had to Steve Martin’s giddily unbalanced George during all my many adolescent viewings of the movie.

When my sister got married last summer, the wildest he got was tearing up a little bit when her now-husband asked permission to propose.

But, as wonderful as Steve Martin is at playing unhinged (see: The Jerk. Literally. See it if you haven’t.), it’s his character’s real and rare moments of heart I’ve always remembered most.

Well—second to the hot dog bun scene. Of course. Backtracking here, but for those without the pleasure of hours of quality VCR time with this sequence: after deciding to host the wedding reception at home, George, freaking out at the escalating cost and interior redecorating, goes on a grocery store rampage, ripping open and “removing the extraneous buns” from bags to equalize the bun/dog ratio. Landing him in jail.

Oh, the countless times I’ve restrained myself from ripping open my own hot dog bun bags. It’s such a wonderfully gratifying moment of confronting and actually rectifying life’s absurdities. Grabbing life by the buns.

But once behind bars and finally following his wife’s orders to calm the f*** down, George does just that, swerving the movie into its true nostalgia sweet spots.

Now we launch into the scenes so melded into my brain I couldn’t help but reminisce about a few of them during my sister’s festivities.

After all, we had watched these moments countless times together, cuddled together on the couch or on cross-state road trips in the old Dodge Ram Family Wagon.

I know, even then, we recognized the scene of George and Annie playing basketball in the front yard on the restless night before her big day as a scary, exhilarating No Turning Back moment of crossing that threshold into adulthood.

“I don’t want to go,” Annie confesses, after packing up her childhood room, to the last person she probably should. “But I know I can’t stay.”

And in that miraculous L.A. moment, it starts to snow. Even watching it back today, I can’t fault that heavy-handedness in signaling this new beginning.

George tells Annie, now fully aware of the shift in her life that he has been outwardly dreading in grocery store aisles since the day she first flashed him her engagement ring: “I know I’ll remember this moment for the rest of my life.”

Annie Banks-MacKenzie: Kate Middleton’s true dress inspiration

And I will, too. But as I watched my dad, the person I most trust and admire and feel the gravity of in my life (apart from my mom. Know you’re reading. Hi Mom!) walk my sister down that aisle, that scene and a collection of anecdotes and movie scenes and childhood ideas of what this antiquated ritual meant was instantly replaced with that same clarity. That weird out-of-body, oh wait, this is A Moment sensation. Now a vivid recollection: my sister, so happy and shyly beautiful, escorted by my proud, misty-eyed father.

Not much was really, fundamentally changing in the subsequent moments of our yoga teacher officiant (hello Southern California wedding!) briefly making it legal. Thankfully! But I could not ignore the emotional heft of family and friends all glamorized and celebrating the addition to our family and the birth of a new one.

Like the idealized bad dates I shove into my mental cabinetry and later dump like so many stale nail clippings in favor of new, rawer footage, George and Annie were suddenly ousted by Dad and Bri.

And one day, after I have enough post-first dates of my own to cut together, those two’ll be pushed aside for one killer POV tracking shot.

Because it’s all about me!

Danielle Lee cannot hear “Chapel of Love” without picturing Kieran Culkin running toward a mailbox and would totally wear Sidekicks down the aisle. Or anywhere. The sequel to this piece will be all about Martin Short and pretty bad and published here and on her tumblr simultaneously. As uncle and nephew.