While soap operas are well-known for their outrageous stories and hot and heavy romances, they also excel at iconic weddings.
Every episode is packed with vile villains, spicy bedroom scenes, and dramatic cliffhangers, but on rare occasions — usually, during sweeps month — viewers get to attend super couples weddings.
Soap weddings have made history since the 1980s with their unexpected twists, doomed-from-the-start disasters, and epic love stories that are celebrated for one divine day — or, in the soap world, an entire week.
Most weddings on soap operas involve some degree of drama. Despite this, some spectacular ceremonies have occurred over the years.
When super couples are ready to say “I do,” their fans anticipate a romantic, fun-filled event complete with pomp and circumstance, flowers, and stunning wedding attire.
Before reality TV shows like Married at First Sight and Do not Tell the Bride, TV tragics would get their wedding fix from the age-old soap opera.
A wedding episode is always a ratings success for a television drama. They are frequently accompanied by media blitzes, in which actors repeatedly wear their characters’ costumes for photoshoots and fan meet-and-greets.
“If you want to get on the cover of TV Week, one of the best ways is to have a happy couple in wedding finery,” says Andrew Mercado, a film historian from Australia.
Weddings are cathartic for viewers and a traditional exit strategy. They serve as a way to give beloved characters a happy ending before they ride off into the sunset, possibly to pursue a career in Hollywood.
Here’s a look at some of the most pivotal wedding moments in Australian soap opera history.
Take a look at the top 10 soap opera weddings.
Charlene and Scott on Neighbours (1987)
There are soap opera weddings, and then there is Charlene and Scott, which is arguably one of the most memorable moments in Australian TV history.
The culmination of Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan’s on-screen romance remains one of the most-watched soap opera episodes in Australia, and pulled in almost 20 million British viewers, making it the third-most-watched show of the year in the UK.
It also made the cover of Time Magazine Australia and was featured on postage stamps two decades later, and Charlene’s puffy white and peach wedding gown is still in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery collection.
Although the wedding was rumored to have been sparked by complaints from conservative viewers upset that the couple had moved in together and were “living in sin,” Mercado believes this controversy was a ploy by the writers, who “knew they were already going to marry them off.”
Since then, Neighbours has been able to relive some of the magic by reusing the church where Charlene and Scott married (twice), re-airing footage from the ceremony, and even sending Margot Robbie’s character Donna down the aisle to a cover of Charlene’s wedding song.
Suddenly, the show has reached its 6,000th episodes. The show then aired its first gay wedding in 2018, a year after the public voted “yes” on marriage equality.
Jack And Jennifer (Days Of Our Lives)
In ‘Days of Our Lives’ one-true-pairing found themselves star-crossed from the 80s up to the present day in Salem, but one fateful day in 1991, Jack Deveraux and Jennifer Horton finally made their shipper’s dreams come true by tying the knot.
Despite wearing traditional wedding attire, the couple married in a Wild West-themed ceremony attended by cowboys and cowgirls before heading to Hollywood for their honeymoon.
Mary and Jack, Ryan’s Hope
A year after the much-missed ABC soap premiered, it married off its first super-couple — and as you can probably tell from their portrait, they were an aggressive pair.
They were such a contentious couple that it was not until the very end that viewers — or the lovers themselves — knew whether or not a wedding would take place.
Fearing that putting a ring on her groom’s finger would make him no less prickly and impossible than he had always been, Mary developed a case of cold feet so severe that she could not walk, let alone march down the aisle.
Liam And Steffy (Bold And The Beautiful)
Liam and Steffy, the famous on-and-off-again couple from Bold and the Beautiful, have been married three times, but nothing compares to their first wedding — literally.
While waiting on a hilltop in Aspen for his ex-girlfriend Hope, Liam got a surprise when a woman approached him, wearing a wedding dress and removing her veil to reveal herself to be Steffy, and the two married on the spot.
The best part was that Steffy had planned for Hope to be trapped on a gondola above them, forcing her to watch the entire ceremony.
Will And Sonny (Days Of Our Lives)
Following a heartbreaking coming-out storyline that led Will and Sonny to date, fall in love, and make a cheesy Valentine’s Day proposal, the couple married in 2015 in what was daytime’s first same-sex male wedding.
Will and Sonny pledged their love to each other in one of Days of Our Lives’ most beautiful wedding ceremonies, held in the Kiriakis mansion in front of friends and family and officiated by Will’s grandmother, Marlena.
Nikki And Victor (Young And The Restless)
While Nikki and Victor were married in the 1980s and again in the early 2000s following multiple affairs, the couple married for the third and final time in 2013.
What was advertised as a “killer wedding” took place at the Neman Ranch in front of their friends and family, and while the ceremony could not end without a shot being fired, the episode was made even more special because it coincided with the 40th anniversary of Young and the Restless on CBS.
Luke And Laura (General Hospital)
Luke and Laura’s 1983 wedding on ABC’s General Hospital has gone down in history as being one of the biggest, most memorable weddings, not only in soap opera history but in television history.
The couple married without incident at first, exchanging vows in front of the entire town of Port Charles. But, being a soap wedding, especially one starring the iconic Luke Spencer and Laura Webber, things took a turn when Laura’s ex-husband Scott Baldwin punched the groom, and villainess Helena Cassadine, played by Elizabeth Taylor, cursed them.
Bo And Hope (Days Of Our Lives)
Days of Our Lives, Bo and Hope were compared to the characters Luke and Laura on General Hospital. While the latter’s wedding attracted real-life royal attention, Bo and Hope’s fictional wedding became a royal ceremony.
After bringing a murderer to justice in England, the English government honored the couple with a royal wedding.
Bo and Hope married during an on-location shoot for the Days cast, and their friends and family from Salem flew abroad for the wedding.
Rose and Julian on Number 96 (1972)
Number 96 was the first Australian television show to feature nudity and homosexual main characters, breaking many boundaries.
But not all of them were positive. Vivienne Garrett, who portrayed Rose Godolfus, broke her contract with the series after a plot line called for her character to “enjoy” a rape scene.
Garrett’s exit was a classic soap opera climax: a grand wedding. The publicity surrounding the nuptials was massive.
On the same day the wedding scene was filmed, the production company held a mock wedding reception at a hotel in Kings Cross. “I was told that all of the journalists and media would be the guests,” Garrett recalls. The cast was whisked away to a reception immediately following filming, while still dressed in costume.
There were speeches, a bouquet toss, and, as it was a Jewish wedding, even stomped glasses: “I just thought, ‘What’s this about?’ We’re blurring the lines of reality!’ ”
Most children were forbidden from watching Number 96 due to its controversial content, but in Jewish homes across Australia, entire families tuned in to watch the wedding.
Toni and CJ on E Street (1992)
E Street, set in a fictional working-class Sydney neighborhood, aired from 1989 to 1993. Although its heyday was an ongoing serial killer plot line in 1991 and 1992, it also delivered a peak soap opera moment long after Mr Bad’s untimely departure.
Toni, played by future pop star and presenter Toni Pearen, and CJ, a former bad boy played by Adrian Lee, faced a difficult journey from proposal to marriage.
CJ was hit by a car and lost sight shortly after proposing. Then, as Toni, dressed in pink satin, walks down the aisle, a flash of light strikes CJ’s eyes, making even the most casual VFX fan shudder. As his bride approached, he recovered his vision. “You are beautiful,” he told her, sincerely.
This miraculous recovery was mirrored three years later at Shane’s (Dieter Brummer) and Angel’s (Melissa George) wedding on Home and Away, when a wheelchair-bound Angel regained the strength to hobble down the aisle.
What was the most watched soap opera wedding?
Luke and Laura’s wedding on November 17, 1981, drew 30 million viewers and remains the most-watched soap opera episode in American daytime television history.
Elizabeth Taylor made a brief appearance at the event, and Princess Diana provided champagne.
Read Also – “Soap Opera Super Couples: 10 Pairs That Defined True Love”
