27 Dresses

A few days before I screened 27 Dresses, a friend asked me to take charge of decorating the reception hall for his wedding. And I was delighted to say yes. I don't exactly have 27 bridesmaid dresses in my closet, but I figure I've been behind the scenes on as many as 15 weddings in the last decade. It's work I'm happy to do.

Like our heroine Jane (Katherine Heigl), I enjoy weddings. Bringing together two families and their friends is always a fascinating sociological event. I also think something beautiful and sacred often happens in wedding ceremonies. And it might be true that I'm a bit of a romantic. Unlike Jane, however, I don't clip and save columns from the wedding section of the newspaper, and I have never double-booked—shuffling back and forth between two bridesmaid gowns and two receptions—on the same night. Such is the predicament in which we find Jane in the opening scenes.

In 27 Dresses, Jane is obsessed with everything white and taffeta, and is seemingly the go-to friend for brides across midtown Manhattan. Her overflowing closet offers the tangible and tacky proof of her exploits—a hoop skirt from a Gone with the Wind–themed wedding, a flared gown than makes her look like an olive green mermaid, and an actual mermaid swimsuit from an underwater ceremony. Twenty-seven fashion blunders in all.

As you might suspect, if you've been in 27 weddings, some of those weddings were surely for people who you might not consider among your closest friends. One might be the wedding of, for example, your goth-punk receptionist. Spiked dog collar? Check.

In a plotline that will seem vaguely familiar to anyone who saw Richard Gere and Julia Roberts in 1999's Runaway Bride, Jane's obsession with weddings ...

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