Chabert Watch! The Wedding Veil Legacy (2022)

Reeser really went all-in on the hat

Watched:  03/05/2025

Format:  Hallmark

Viewing;  First

Director:  Terry Ingram

heads-up:  If you're here for 100% Chabert content, I am going to alert you now, Lacey Chabert is a supporting character/ Executive Producer on this movie, and not the star.  But watching the Chabert filmography will mean sometimes she is not the lead.  I know.  I can't believe it either.

Job:  Art and Rarities Auction House Exec

new skill:  cooking Italian food

Man: Victor Webster

Job of Man:  Restaurateur and Chef

Goes to/ Returns to:  Stays in NYC

Event:  Auction House gala

Food:  a bunch of Italian food, esp. cannoli, and sloppy joes?

I don't think I understood The Wedding Veil Legacy (2022).  I mean, I got what happened in it, but I didn't get it.  But I do hope these movies are increasingly titled like Jason Bourne movies.

Our skeptic (Alison Sweeney) of the veil's awesome powers goes through a long-projected, but fairly painless breakup with her boyfriend of a few years.  He's a classical trumpet player and has a chance to play for the LA Symphony, so with him leaving NYC, they hang it up.

In the two prior movies, we got the foreshadowing that maybe this was a relationship of convenience, and, indeed, it seems that way as the two don't even try to do long-distance and see if they'll miss each other - they just break up when he takes the job.  She is a native New Yorker, and can't imagine living elsewhere (fair) and is also working her dream job at an art auction house (also, you go girl.  Live your auction life).  So, yeah, she's kinda set.  Sweeney sheds no tears, just settles into a malaise.

Of course, Sweeney is now in possession of the reality-bending wedding veil which insists that people hook-up, and no sooner has she taken it to the tailor to get a snag fixed than she meets Man, who is there getting fitted for a tux.  

And what's funny is that Man is sort of a combo of Man from Movie 1 and Movie 2.  He meets her initially in a random location where they spat, and then runs into her again on the job where she has to work with him (Movie 1), building the relationship.  He's also Italian, and very involved with his family and their craft (Movie 2) - in this case, he's the chef at a nice Italian place which her auction house has hired for catering an event.

The two hit it off in the easy way of two Hallmark stars who co-star in a series of mystery movies on the Hallmark mystery channel (Sweeney stars in the Hannah Swensen Mysteries series, which I have not seen).  Ie:  they are super chummy to the point where it never feels like "I am getting to know this guy", but rather "these two have known each other a while".  Which is fine, but...

When I say I didn't get it - my response was mixed with a factor Jamie mentioned during the film, a factor that has been plaguing me through all three movies in this series, and maybe long before.  

Hallmark seems to have a Victorian rule that no one actually consummates their love with a single dry kiss until the very end of a movie.  Like... why?  Why do they think a kiss is the be-all-end-all?  The audience is not made of children.  We know a kiss is not a ring or even a "are we actually dating?" conversation.  More movie can happen after you break the tension of a first kiss.

The two leads don't even squabble and go from enemies-to-friends, they immediately start spending *all* of their time together, helping each other with their jobs.  She's helping select art for his new restaurant, and he's helping her sell a rare document.  He's doing boyfriend stuff like taking her rug shopping, lugging rugs, etc...  She's taking her best pals (Chabert and Autumn Reeser) to his restaurant to meet him.  She has him over to her apartment for dinner and drinks - and in any other world, Netflixing and chilling (but... we're supposed to believe that when the camera cuts, these two are just ending their evenings with a friendly handshake).  And, to be honest, Sweeney is putting herself into a flattering, form-fitting dress and is trying to decide "will he like this?"  Let me help!  Yes.  Yes, he will.

The reason I was confused, and this is on me, is that the "conflict" of the movie is basically that Sweeney is scared this won't work out?  Maybe, it's "too soon" after she broke up with a dude she'd been complaining about for two years of movie-time in two movies?  Maybe she thinks this will work, but only for a while?  There's a hint that maybe she's hung up on her parents' divorce, but...  when its brought up, she just stares, blinking. She doesn't really say.  All *I* know is that she flips out when her best friends press her on what is happening with Man - after she's taken them to meet Man and he's been charming, generous and handsome.  And, when our couple have been together for what seems like every day for like a month, they share a single kiss at the end of a night, and she loses it right there.  Like, tears and tremors.

I will say, 50% of the people in our house found this sympathetic.  50% did not.  

Look, I get that everyone lives in their own head, and we don't get inner monologues in these films.  And these movies are not aimed at me, but...  after your twenties, if you're still pulling the 'ol "treat him as a boyfriend, but then act like something is wrong when he thinks he's doing something pretty reasonable to move this to the next, long-delayed phase" your dude will do one of a few things - after going home to mope:

• Depending on circumstances, decide that you're actually unstable, and that he'd just opened a whole can of worms 
• he may decide that they doesn't need this
• give it another shot, but a tentative one - and when you do it again, you may hear "you're just crazy, aren't you?"
• Ask "what the @#$%?" and make you talk about it, which - I'm guessing from this movie, this character could not do, as she only articulates things to her mother and college friends.  
• This will lead to The Big Fight
• He is going to be really tired around midnight when you're still talking about your feelings in vague terms and he has no idea where this is going, but knows that if he pulls out now, he's going to be the villain in your story
• Tries to be a gentleman, and maybe put up with you pulling this one more time.  After that, he taps out, because clearly you're not handling your life well right now
• He may, rightly or wrongly, decide you're just enjoying attention
• Deduce that you're holding out for something else/ better

But in Hallmark land, we will never, ever explore what anyone but our lead is pondering.  Man will be happy and patient until the stars die.

So, yes, this movie was annoying.  It had some okay bits - the rug acquisition was kind of funny as a running gag.  I liked that there was an evil antiquities collector when Sweeney was in line with Indiana Jones' "this belongs in a museum" bit.  It had lots of Chabert and Reeser.  But it did a bad job of articulating the actual problem or why it was a problem.  And missed a chance to have a scene where two people clearly in their 40's talk it out, and we get some three-dimensionality.

If your issue is that you are scared things won't work out, flipping out when a dude you've been fawning over for 70 minutes of runtime makes a play, we may as well have called this The Wedding Veil Self-Sabotage.

Whatever.

Mostly I'm concerned that there are three more of these movies.  I thought it was two more, but it's three.  And I am dying inside knowing I have to keep doing this.