The 16 most HBO weddings in HBO history

Here's a toast to the many times the network has turned the happiest day in one's life into depressing, traumatic, bloody, unromantic, and always compelling TV

By Saloni Gajjar, Drew Gillis, William Hughes, Tim Lowery, Matt Schimkowitz | June 16, 2023 | 3:00pm

TV Features Wedding

Photos: Succession (David Russsell/HBO),Girls (Screenshot/HBO) Search Party (Jon Pack/ HBO Max) Game of Thrones (Helen Sloan/ HBO), Sex and the City (Screenshot/ HBO) Graphic: The A.V. Club

HBO is known for a lot of things: great programming, relative creative freedom, nudity that arguably veers toward gratuitous. But a lesser-discussed facet of the network’s TV output is that its creators seem to love having weddings that are anywhere from totally depressing to completely disastrous. There are obvious narrative reasons to include a wedding (or two or three) in a TV show. The event is generally a pivotal moment in someone’s life, on par with a birth or a death. (We could do whole lists on HBO’s treatment of those events, too.) It’s also inherently dramatic, which is catnip for writers. So, since it’s officially wedding season, The A.V. Club has put together our favorite, let’s say, unideal nuptials from the network.

Connor and Willa’s wedding on Succession (season 4, episode 3)

Nobody dies at Connor Roy’s wedding—but only because the eldest Roy kid rated so little in his father’s estimation that the old bastard couldn’t even be bothered to expire on his watch. The first 15 minutes of series-best episode are standard , as characters maneuver and snark around each other with typical wit. But then the phone rings, and the episode plunges into a very relatable sort of horror movie, of the kind that anyone who’s ever suddenly lost a loved one has likely lived through. Just like his kids, we don’t even hear that something’s wrong with Logan Roy until he’s already dead—Mark Mylod’s camera keeping the patriarch’s body at the edge of the frame as Tom Wambsgans relays the grim, inevitable details to his brothers-in-law and estranged wife. It’s the moment the entire series has been building to—and the totally unprepared, disbelieving way the kids receive it sets the tone for the entire rest of the show’s heartbreaking and beautifully bitter final season. [William Hughes]

8 Comments

deb03449a1-av says:

June 16, 2023 at 4:32 pm

I keep forgetting Girls existed.

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- kinjacaffeinespider-av says:
  
  June 16, 2023 at 4:48 pm
  
  Lucky.
  
  Reply
- iwontlosethisone-av says:
  
  June 16, 2023 at 6:04 pm
  
  Once High Maintenance and Insecure hit, I completely put it out of my mind.
  
  Reply
mantequillas-av says:

June 16, 2023 at 4:49 pm

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trevceratops-av says:

June 16, 2023 at 6:59 pm

So weird to make that this site is including Max shows with all these HBO lists when they’ve explicitly changed their name to avoid conflation with HBO branding.

Reply
cryptoupdatess-av says:

June 17, 2023 at 4:26 am

Greet HBO history#cryptoupdatess See this https://www.cryptoupdatess.xyz/2023/06/US-Government-Suppressing-Cryptocurrency-Growth.html

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westsidegrrl-av says:

June 17, 2023 at 5:14 am

It’s The Rains of Castamere, not Reins.But now the rains weep o’er his hall / With no one there to hear

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itsnothbo-av says:

June 18, 2023 at 5:18 am

Search Party is not an HBO show. It’s a Max show. And it got two entries even with the vast amount of other HBO shows. F-

Reply

The 16 most HBO weddings in HBO history

Here's a toast to the many times the network has turned the happiest day in one's life into depressing, traumatic, bloody, unromantic, and always compelling TV

8 Comments

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