Plan Your Meetings

The musical “A Catered Affair” is playing on Broadway to good reviews. It’s about a working class Bronx family in 1953 who must decide whether to spend their life’s savings on a family business or a wedding for their only daughter. The advertising teaser reads, “A simple decision, but is anything simple when it comes to family?” The only vendor in the cast is the caterer. I haven’t seen the show, so I can’t tell you anymore, but the ads made me reflect on movies that have involved event planners. Here are a few: “Monsoon Wedding” is a movie about an extended Delhi family preparing for a daughter’s traditional Punjabi wedding. The rainy season is on its way, literally and figuratively. P.K. Dubey, the hapless and eventually endearing wedding planner (or “contractor” in the local lingo), is having to deal with the coming monsoon, the servant girl who catches his eye, his demanding client and his equally demanding mother. In “The Wedding Planner,” the workaholic wedding planner (does that sound familiar?) played by Jennifer Lopez is so devoted to her career she doesn’t have time to find a man. Things change, however, when she has an accident involving a runaway dumpster during wedding preparations. Then, of course, there’s “Father of the Bride” in several versions. It’s a comedy about a man trying to cope with all of the disasters that happen along the way from the time his daughter announces her engagement until the wedding actually occurs. There’s the original 1950 movie, a television series, a play and a 1991 remake starring Steve Martin (with a sequel). The funniest member of the cast in the remake(s) is Martin Short as the wedding planner. So, why aren’t there more movies about event planners? There’s certainly plenty of fodder in the day-to-day details and challenges that planners face. Any would be screen writers out there?