Travel binge. | Holiday 2021 // Christmas Wedding Planner

• While planning her cousin's lavish wedding, Kelsey Wilson's world is turned upside down when Private Investigator Connor McClean shows up. Connor, hired by a unnamed source, disrupts the upcoming nuptials but manages to win Kelsey's heart.

I came to Philadelphia to spend some time with my aunt. On the way from the train station I decided to stop into a Dollar Tree. I needed to get some toiletries and figured I could get some popcorn as well, popcorn for a movie binge. The holiday movie binge got rolling with  A Christmas Princess (ACP) and brought me back to the Netflix database for seasonal flicks. I finally settled on Christmas Wedding Planner (2017). I’ll admit, watching the first 10-ish minutes of the movie I thought this is gonna be a wedding planner steals or falls in love with fiancé of bride whose wedding she’s planning. I was 1000% ready to be on the disgust cringe train when thankfully they revealed that he was the bride’s ex. And from there the hijinkery commenced.

LIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD

Kelsey is planning her cousin Emily’s wedding. When she learns that Connor, Emily’s ex, is a private investigator looking into Emily’s fiancé she tries to dissuade him from interfering but ends up teaming up with Connor in an attempt to protect Emily from any unsavory truths. We see Kelsey and Connor grow ever closer as they snuff out the truth, Each trying to minimize an obvious attraction. I suppose the fiancés in the story are each supposed to be upper middle class, some type of petite bourgeoisie, so money is never a conflict in the story. Conflict instead arises from assumptions of lying, which of course are revealed as never true as a romantic male lead is the most honest person you can imagine. 

The “he’s not who I thought he was, but then of course he is, he’s actually super honest” trope endures the watcher to the male lead, who has fallen head over heels with the female lead. Even when the wedding is inevitably ruined and called off, despite knowing each other for maybe five days, no more than two weeks, the male and the female lead get married. Again, that is to say that the wedding planner and her cousin’s ex get married barely knowing each other. And this dear reader is why I watch Christmas movies. The inane leap of logic, of common sense, wrapped in a sappy romance, a sappy whirlwind romance, is chef’s kiss.

Comparing this movie to ACP, this is the clear winner, especially if you’re looking for a “serious” Christmas movie. The romance (before the wedding) is believable, the chemistry between the lead is believable. Sure, the scandal of hidden baby to be with the ex-maid is maybe a bit extreme for a Christmas movie, but I wouldn’t doubt that a lot of upper middle class families, like those portrayed here, do those kinds of things all the time. I feel like this wealth is giving middle of the country, Heartland, winter,  works in finance or contracting wealth. 

Whereas ACP was enjoyable for its ridiculousness, this one was just enjoyable as a movie. I know I said I wasn’t going to write movies but I feel like if I were to write this be about an 8.5 out of 10. It was a corny sappy movie like I expected it to be, but that last minute wedding was just a bit much for me. And they didn’t even bring back Joey Fatone’s random character for the wedding! Because Joey Fatone’s character was catering the wedding so surely he could’ve been there as well. Anyway, the binge will continue and the aesthetic, the feeling of Christmas, way early this year, in September, will be fostered.

Watch out for my Holiday 2021 (#Holiday2021) series, where I think I'll be recapping Holiday movies I'm watching this season and other festive things if they appear.