10 Movie Weddings That Were More Like The Real Deal

10. The Deer Hunter

Wedding nights don't last forever. Eventually the hub-bub dies down, the magic dissipates, the champagne runs dry and people have to go home. No film perhaps captures this temporal nature better than the 1978 classic The Deer Hunter, which focuses on the young men who fought, died and went insane in Vietnam. The film is split into three sections, which depict the lives of its central cast (which includes cinematic titans like Christopher Walken, Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep) before, during and after the war. Each part of the story is fantastic, but there really is nothing like its first section, which is devoted solely to the wedding of John Savage's Steven, who accompanies De Niro's Mike and Walken's Nick into the horror of Vietnam shortly after. The wedding scene is undoubtedly one of the best ever put to film, and this is particularly due to its realism. According to legend, all of the extras featured in the scene behaved as if it was a real ceremony and reception, going so far as to drink real beer and wine, and show up to the shoot bearing gifts reflective of the wedding's Russian Orthodox denomination. This gives the proceedings a sprawling, messy feel, just like real life. Of course, nothing contributes to the scene's recognizable flavor like the main cast. From the hidden torch that Mike carries for Streep's Linda, to the eerie foreboding quality that hangs over the celebration, this scene encapsulates all of the complexity inherent to a large gathering, and the sad truth that a night celebrating love can't negate the harsh, unstoppable nature of global conflict.