"Father of the Bride"(1991)--Did Mr. Banks have a point?

Cafe Society
1

No boxed spoilers because the movie is a 20 year old remake.

I’m watching this movie, which I’ve seen dozens of times over the years, but this time is different. On tonight’s viewing, I’m having a very different reaction than I have had in the past.

God help me, but I sympathize with George. In the movie, the Banks are depicted as upper middle class, far less wealthy than their future son-in-law’s family who lives in Bel Aire. George’s daughter wants a big wedding, which I suppose I understand, but at $250/head and over 500 guests, that was over $125,000. In today’s money, that’s over $200,000. Later in the movie, George’s wife (Diane Keaton) tells George that they could afford it because she doesn’t drive an expensive car or wear expensive jewelry. But still–one gets the idea that this wedding is really going to set the Banks back by a lot.

The writers’ intention, I think, is to create a romantic comedy with George as the uptight, worrying father who just needs to get the stick out of his ass and “go with the flow” (a quote from the movie), even though his concerns about budget are valid by any reasonable standard. To really drive the point home, the writers put in a scene with George picking up a magazine off of his sleeping daughter’s chest. She’s been reading an article in a bridal mag about how to have a wedding on a budget. The purpose of this scene is to show that George is a real jerk for being concerned about money. Heaven forbid they try to save money on a wedding by hiring a friend take the pictures. And how dare George balk at paying for 8 round-trip tickets from Denmark so his future son-in-law’s family can come over, because it’s tradition donchaknow that the bride’s family pays for everything.

Furthermore, George’s very real concerns about the wedding planner’s costly decisions are pitched as George just being a stick in the mud. Of course! Just let the planners do whatever the fuck they want, because it’s a wedding, and Daddy’s Little Girl deserves it Moving all the furniture out to bring in chairs, renting swans, and drilling holes in the ceiling, buying new tuxes, etc–all just run-of-the-mill wedding stuff.

I would feel so guilty about making my parents spend this much on a wedding, and I’m really wondering if I’m the only one. Obviously, the movie was a hit, so it rang true to a lot of people.

Am I alone here?

2

Of course he’s totally right. That is a ridiculous amount to pay for a single day in someone’s life. You could buy a house for that, and that will last you a lifetime. It’s a waste of money, and worse even, a huge waste of someone else’s money.

3

Only Hollywood screenwriters would portray a middle class man being asked to pay $125,000 for a wedding as being the bad guy.

4

He wasn’t the “bad guy,” per se. He was the buffoonish victim.

5

It’s just amazing to me that movies like this are a hit.

Maybe the times have just changed that much. Most of the women I know today would prefer to have a do-it-yourself wedding. Anecdotal, I know, but in all the weddings I’ve been a guest at, I can’t think of a single one that used a professional photographer. There was always some friend who took the pictures.

In fact, with most of the women I’ve known, it would be a point of pride to pull of an elegant, but inexpensive wedding. Have times really changed that much in only 20 years?

ETA: In the interest of extending the reach of this thread a bit, I’d be interested to know about others’ experiences with this phenomenon: Watching a movie you’ve seen a bunch of times and having a completely different reaction to it than you’ve had in the past.

6

I think people are paying for their own weddings more now, since probably the majority of marrying couples are already living together and sharing their life expenses, rather than the bride still living with her parents and being supported by them. So yes, it has changed a lot in 20 years.

7

Keep in mind the $125,000 covered just the cost of the reception and presumably didn’t include the dresses, tuxedos, wedding bands, church rental, and the aforementioned round trip tickets from Denmark for the groom’s relatives (and accommodations for them).

I saw this movie shortly after it came out, and again a few years ago, right after I got married and it really hit home. Granted we didn’t spend anywhere near the amount the couple did in the movie (we only had about 40 guests, mostly family). But those expenses quickly add up. Anyway my wife’s family wasn’t (and still isn’t) doing too well financially, so I knew they weren’t going to be able to chip in much - they got a family friend to do the catering and paid for a photographer. I wasn’t comfortable asking my parents, though they too chipped in little, basically enough to cover the cost of the reception hall, a local Shriner’s building. My wife and I paid for pretty much everything else.

Anyway I’ve always kind of sided with Steve Martin’s character and thought the daughter was kind of a spoiled brat.

8

And, while I sympathize with Steve Martin’s character, there was a bit of good old dick-measuring going on there, too, IIRC. He was trying to prove that he could provide at least as well as the groom’s father could, with his bigger bank account, and let himself be cornered into paying more than he wanted to in order to keep up appearances.

9

Yes, she was very bratty. Especially during that scene where George, very reasonably, requested that the guest list be trimmed down to 100 or so people. He involved Mom, the daughter, and even his young son in the process, but Little Princess ends up storming off.

I very rarely have strong negative reactions to movies, so this is very odd. The movie ended a little while ago, and I"m still thinking about it.

10

Side point but the main character in Father of the Bride is George Banks? Just like the father in Mary Poppins!

11

<checks IMDB>

So it is!

And Mary Poppins is probably a much better movie (haven’t seen it in years).

12

I loved this movie, but even at the time I sided with the father. I felt like he was the only sane one in a sea of crazy people. Someone mentioned the magazine his daughter was reading. It mentioned - GASP! - the bride making her own dress. The shame! Except, in my family, everyone is stunned and impressed if the bride makes her own dress.

13

Is it customary for the bride’s side to cover the entire cost of the wedding? And if so, has anyone told Kate Middleton’s parents?

14

In the US, that’s the old tradition. I’m sure it’s a holdover from the old dowry traditions - women used to also have a hope chest full of linens and the like for their future marriage, and that only died out within the last couple generations or so. There’s still some expectation - or that the groom’s parents aren’t going to cover much, at least - but it’s really falling out of favor.

I got married in 1997, and my father-in-law had already had four daughters (all over a decade older than my husband) get married. He told us it wasn’t his job to pay for this wedding since I wasn’t his daughter. My mom was not well off and my dad had died a few years prior, so my husband and I paid for nearly everything. We hosted about 100 people for $5k. We were going to pay for everything until my FIL angrily confronted my now-husband, asking why he hadn’t been consulted on anything - hey, you don’t pay, you don’t get a say. He ended up paying for the champagne, rehearsal dinner, cake, and flowers (just one flower for each person in the wedding party, and some potted mums for the wedding site).

15

I haven’t seen the movie since it first came out (when I was 11), so I don’t remember much of it except for the scene with the hot dog buns, but I’m a pretty big stickler for people throwing away their life savings on a wedding. Is the bride in that movie a selfish brat?

16

I can assure you that it’s not just you–I actually got angry when I watched it. I spent much of the movie wishing I could bitch-slap the women right through the walls of their middle-class home. Never did they consider anyone else’s needs or opinions–no, it all had to be high-dollar and fairy-tale perfect, as if all that somehow makes the vows more valid.

I got married on a budget, because we just didn’t have that much to spend. Most everything was made at home or purchased from discount vendors. We economized every way we could (one of my favorites was getting medium-sized styrofoam meat trays from the butcher to serve the cake and snacks on–they were the perfect size, and the raised sides prevented spills). At the end of the day, I was just as married as someone who spent a fortune!

17

I assumed that the expense was not nearly that much of a burden. Remember that Steve Martin’s character was the upper-middle-class owner of an athletic shoe company so I assumed that he could, in fact afford to spend that much. (Also, given that the reception was held in the backyard, it’s possible that it ended up costing less than $500 a head. I can’t actually see how you could spend that much or fit 500 guests in a backyard.) And the father’s complaints about the cost was a cute way of portraying his angst about losing his daughter. As I remember the Spencer Tracy original, it was pretty much the same storyline, with the same concern about costs spiraling out of control.

18

Clearly I’m going to have to rent the movie now, because I saw it long ago when it came out and don’t remember much–but I thought that was the premise, that he was surrounded by lunatics.

My mom sewed my wedding dress.

19

“I *want *the CHEEPA chicken!” (my wife an I also constantly steal the line about the valet parking “FRONCK: Four is good, three is acceptable anything less scares me. GEORGE: Two.”)

Granted, yes, part of it is that he is losing his daughter. But, part of it is that he has a point that the wedding planning was out of control and no one would take his feelings seriously, or really listen to him at all.

20

Don’t forget though, the groom’s parents, who were a lot richer than him, offered to pay for it too - George was the one insistent that he had to pay for it all himself. IMHO, he was being a bit of an asshole - if very rich people want to pay for their own son’s wedding, and have it on a scale that very rich people can easily afford, his choices are (a) let them pay for it, or (b) if he’s utterly insistent that he must pay for it himself, he’s got to deal with the fact that he’s going to have to put on a wedding of the same scale as the richer people would have.