Two best friends, one wedding date. No mercy.
"Hideously commercial – gloriously so."
Bride Wars is a 2009 film starring Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway. It's about two best friends, Liv (Hudson) and Emma (Hathaway) who had a lifelong dream of having a wedding in June at the Plaza Hotel. However, because of a clerical error by their wedding planner, they ended up having the exact same day. Now they are in the fight for their right to have their dream wedding and their friendship is put up to the test.
It would receive a Chinese remake in 2015.
Don't confuse it with Wedding Wars.
This film provides examples of:
- Babies Ever After: After fixing up everything and becoming sisters-in-law, Liv and Emma both find out they're pregnant and due to give birth on the same day.
- Back-to-Back Poster: The film poster has protagonists and best friends Liv and Emma posed back-to-back on the cover, looking sweet in their wedding dresses. The film is about how their friendship is nearly ruined by the fact that they have the same wedding day.
- Big Eater: Liv, to the point of eating an entire box of chocolates (thinking they're from her fiancé), taste-testing various cakes and brownies and eating sticks of butter from different countries. Emma exploits this just so she could unexpectedly gain weight so she wouldn't fit into her wedding dress.
- Bouquet Toss: Emma and Liv jumped up to catch the bouquet. They caught it at the same time.
- Bridezilla: There are two of them. Emma and Liv are convinced that nothing is more important than their wedding and they start competing to upstage one another.
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Broken Aesop: The movie has a Friends Forever message that is ruined by the way the two friends attack each other. - Conflict Ball: The boyfriends even point out how the girls fighting over this is out of character for them.
- Did Not Get the Girl: Inverted. Emma breaks up with Fletcher.
- Disposable Fiancé: Fletcher, who ends up breaking up with Emma over her behavior on their wedding day.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Just look at the scene where the two roll around trying to fight with each other, only to stop afterwards, breathing heavily in exhaustion.
- False Soulmate: Emma's fiance Fletcher turns out to be her false soulmate. They've been together for at least a decade and are initially happy to be getting married after Fletcher proposes, but the stress of wedding planning, Emma's increasingly hostile rivalry with her best friend Liv, and the previously shy and unassertive Emma becoming more outspoken and impulsive all puts a lot of strain on their relationship. After things reach a head at Emma and Liv's wedding ceremonies, Emma and Fletcher get into an argument in front of the guests, culminating in Emma tearfully realising that her fiance is still in love with the girl she was ten years ago, but that she's just not the same person anymore and they're no longer compatible. They call off the wedding and the ending reveals that Emma is now Happily Married to and having a baby with Liv's brother Nate, who has long had feelings for her.
- Friendship-Straining Competition: When Liv and Emma are accidentally scheduled to have their weddings on the same day, time, and place, they both expect the other to back down and change their date. When nobody does, things slowly escalate into complete hostility as the girls play nasty pranks on each other to ensure their wedding day is superior.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Emma and Liv, due to their close childhood friendship. More emphasis is placed on their friendship with each other than their relationships with their grooms-to-be despite the film revolving around their weddings.
- Hereditary Wedding Dress: Emma wears her mother's wedding dress when she walks down the aisle for sentimental and financial reasons (contrasting her with her friend/rival Liv, who has more money and chooses to wear a brand new Vera Wang wedding gownnote ). Emma's wedding ultimately doesn't place though, as she and her fiance break up at the altar.
- Here We Go Again!: Subverted. The two brides get pregnant and find that they're due on the same day. Both, however, get excited.
- Hide Your Lesbians: Despite the subtext, Emma and Liv are paired up to marry different spouses on the same day, not each other.
- Homoerotic Subtext: A lot between childhood friends Emma and Liv.
- It's All About Me: The general attitude of the two brides about their wedding day increasingly becomes all about what they want for their big day and let's just forget about those pesky grooms. Neither bride is willing to compromise on her vision, to the point of trying to sabotage and one-up each other, much to the concern and exasperation of their grooms and guests.
- Last-Minute Hookup: Emma and Nate, who have minor Ship Tease in the film and end up marrying and expecting a child together by the end.
- A Minor Kidroduction: The movie starts with the two leads as young girls having a pretend wedding in the attic.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Liv and Emma have this reaction attempting to sabotage the other's wedding. It doesn't last long. And again when Emma lashes out at Liv and tackles her on her wedding day.
- My Hair Came Out Green: Blue colour. Invoked as Emma sabotages Liv's hair dye while Liv is at the hairdresser's.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: If only the groomsman had just given Emma the right tape, if only Liv had told him that she meant the tape as an apology...
- Only Sane Man: Fletcher, Emma's fiancé, who points out that she's acting immature over an easily resolvable conflict. He gets dumped for his troubles. Considering her behavior during the movie, we can consider this a win for him
- Pimped-Out Dress / Fairytale Wedding Dress: You need a Vera Wang wedding dress and you can't alter it. You must alter your body.
- Satellite Love Interest: The two male grooms are barely noticeable throughout the film and are more plot vehicles than characters. At no point do they issue a strong word to their future wives to stop acting like maniacs. Fletcher does call Emma out on her behavior at one point, and gets dumped for his trouble.
- Shot Gun Wedding: Liv spreads a false rumor around saying that Emma is rushing to the altar because she's pregnant from Fletcher.
- Shout-Out: Liv complaining that she looks like a Smurf with her blue hair.
- Spotting the Thread: After gaining a few pounds, Liv realizes due to her fiancé's complete confusion and obliviousness that he wasn't the one sending her sweet treats as gifts; it was Emma who was trying to fatten her up knowing she wouldn't fit into her wedding dress.
- That Came Out Wrong: Liv and Emma's attempt at bashing each other's weddings ends with Emma messing up her words.
- Third Act Stupidity: Stupidity and Selfishness. Worse, this could all have been avoided if they'd agreed at the beginning of the movie to have a double wedding. Makes sense as they have lots of friends in common, but it is also fair to say any bride wants to be in the center. There's a scene where Liv remembers she switched the tape, and gives the real one back. She sends her assistant to deliver the real one... who hides it instead, saying "you'll thank me later." Well, no, she won't. He didn't know it was the real tape; he thought it would be a harmful one.
- Undercrank: The dance scene set to "Get Ready for This" by 2 Unlimited.
- Villain Protagonist: Both the leads.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Fletcher gives this to his fiancée. It doesn't end well for him. Or quite the opposite depending of your views.
