The Wedding Date is a 2005 romantic comedy film, directed by Clare Kilner, who also directed the 2003 romantic comedy How to Deal. Kat Ellis (played by Debra Messing) is an unmarried New Yorker who is invited back to her parent's London home to attend her younger sister's wedding. She is surprised to discover that the best man is none other than her ex-fiancé, who dumped her without warning two years ago. Anxious about confronting him, she hires male escort Nick Mercer (played by Dermot Mulroney) to pose as her boyfriend. She intends to make her ex jealous, but her plan backfires when Nick convinces everyone, including her, that they're madly in love. Tagline: Love doesn't come cheap. Kat Ellis is looking for the right man. NOW. The position comes with a few requirements: willingness to travel, keen social skills, good looks, suave demeanor, sharp mind--and a tux. The qualified candidate should also have the ability to make ex-boyfriends jealous, to turn heads whenever entering a room and to reduce any woman within eye-and earshot to a week-kneed, besotted admirer. Kat wouldn’t be so urgently in need were in not for her spoiled half sister’s wedding where the best man happens to be Kat’s handsome ex-boyfriend. What’s worse, the currently single Kat has to schlep all the way from New York to London, where her wildly dysfunctional family lives. And since the wedding is happening next week, Kat does what any enterprising single woman would do--she hires a professional. So what if her solution crosses a few morally dubious lines plus costs her a tidy six thousand bucks which she’ll have to drain from her 401K? And so what if her escort happens to be--well, an escort? Lucky for her that her hiring skills are pitch-perfect and she zeroes in on smooth heart-stopper Nick Mercer, one of New York’s better known and in-demand professional male escorts. Once in England, the insightful and charismatic Nick--part actor/part shrink/part bon vivant--helps Kat navigate the choppy waters of her screwy family and caddish old flame Jeffrey and convinces everyone he meets that he and Kate are an item. As Nick charms Kat’s parents, Bunny and Victor Ellis, her self-absorbed half sister Amy, Amy’s fiancée Edward, as well as every living, breathing woman within a 100-kilometer radius, Kat too finds herself feeling things she’s never felt before. For Kat, what begins as merely a face-saving ruse with a dashing guy-for-hire quickly starts to become more than she ever expected |
