Fourth Date Marriage - Television Tropes & Idioms

Once Upon A Time Love At First Sight was all the romantic setup the audience needed, especially in Disney Movies and early romantic movies. But times have changed and we now demand a more realistic build up for our on screen couples... three days or so should do it.

It seems in your general 90 minute movie audiences are pretty willing to accept that a couple will progress to the point of getting engaged, or at least to a fairly intense point in a matter of days or weeks, rarely more than a month. This isn't all that realistic, not that relationships with short courtships prior to the engagement haven't worked in real life but successful ones are fairly rare.

Compare Falling In Love Montage for other ways to get a couple together without spending a lot of screen time on the process. Also compare Engaging Conversation.

Sometimes Truth In Television, especially for shows set in a time period where long relationships before marriage were considered "absolutely lunatic and idiotic", such as the 1950s.

Examples

Anime and Manga

A comedic josei manga lampshades this, where two doctors still studying have a quick marriage in order not to derail each other's schedules; the woman not only worries about being a virgin but also her newly discovered habit of fainting or passing out whenever she gets excited enough to try and have sex.
Claire Stanfield and Chane Laforet from Baccano! become informally engaged after all but two meetings. Of course, much of this can be attributed to Claire's unorthodox flirting strategy, which consists of proposing to complete strangers that he thinks are cute and hoping one of them eventually says yes. On the flip side of the spectrum, we have Firo and Ennis — a relationship which involved a fifty year courtship before they got serious.

Comic Books

In the Marvel Universe, Hawkeye and Mockingbird got married a couple of days after they met. Admittedly it was a very intense couple of days.

Film

Romancing The Stone — though somewhat justified in that Joan Wilder is herself a romance novelist and a self-confessed hopeless romantic.
- Further justified in that she doesn't marry him, she just runs off on a cruise around the world with him. The sequel shows them to be having the expected relationship problems that come up when strangers run off with each other.
How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days
Failure to Launch
Two Weeks Notice
- Averted, actually; the central couple, George and Lucy, knew each other for a year before romance developed.
- And although they did get married in the original ending, the movie as released ended with them merely in a relationship.
The Princess Diaries 2: A Royal Engagement (Disney)
The Mummy — Rick and Evy seem to fall in love pretty quickly
Speed — Subversion Because they cited statistics on how their relationship started gave indication it wouldn't last. And indeed, it didn't.
Practical Magic is another subversion.The first time one of the sisters falls, we don't know how long it took. The second time the same woman falls, it's her own doing because she sent for him herself.
The Saint The Movie also had this happen. He counted her as a mark, romanced her to get to his target, and found himself falling in love with her. She took longer because she was pissed off at him stealing from her. But by the end of the week, they were in love.
Splash — Four or five days is enough for him to completely abandon his life on land to be with her.
- To be fair, officers were coming to arrest for helping her escape. Freedom and love in the ocean, or a dingy cell with a Hello New Buddy.
Enchanted seemed to have Giselle learn that old-style Disney romances are no good... but the new style three day ones are fine!
The Holiday: Iris and Amanda each find love in two weeks.
The Heartbreak Kid: Subverted in that the girl Eddie marries after around a month suddenly has a disturbingly quick and negative personality shift. Then, it's played straight when Eddie decides to divorce said wife when he falls in love with a girl after two days.
Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese have two days to fall in love and conceive John in The Terminator. Somewhat justified in that he'd been pining over her photo for years, but she'd only just met him.
- Well, he did make a heck of a first impression.
  - Plus, the entirety of their acquaintance takes place over those same two days, which also involve running for their lives; that sort of thing tends to make for intense emotions and not having time to notice how annoying it is that he never hangs up his towels. It's less than clear that the relationship would have lasted if he'd lived.
The Santa Clause II, Scott has all of one month to marry somebody.
Goldfish Memory features one couple meeting, getting together and planning a family in less time then it takes one partner to realise she's already pregnant from a one-night stand just before they met. Multiple other couples manage to meet, break up, get engaged, and all manner of other things in the same period.
27 Dresses - Two Subversions done two diffent ways. The first couple plays it straight at first, but doesn't end up marrying. The second couple falls in love within a matter of weeks, but doesn't marry until a year later.
In Made Of Honor (the genderswapped My Best Friend's Wedding), Hannah hooks up with Colin- a guy she meets in Scotland on a business trip and they get engaged at most five weeks later, to be wed a fortnight onward. She realizes on the eve of the wedding that she has no idea who he is, and breaks off the engagement by making out with the titular flirty-best-friend of ten years and Man of Honor in the middle of the ceremony.

Literature

In Anansi Boys, Charlie proposes to Daisy after just a few meetings. Granted, proposing to her on the spot was about the only way he could save their lives (it makes sense in context), but after the threat has passed, he doesn't pull out of it but instead solidifies it with an actual engagement ring. Similarly, it only takes Spider a couple of days to realize that Rosie's the one woman for him, and it doesn't take too long for Rosie to come around after leaving him for the whole "I pretended to be your fiance" schtick.
In Lois McMaster Bujold's Shards of Honor, Aral and Cordelia have only known each other for a few days when he proposes (he says it was Love At First Sight, despite the unromantic circumstances).
Not at all common in modern romance novels, but it used to be common - thirty years ago.
Faulkner's As I Lay Dying — Anse is married again by the end of the novel. This is played as being an extreme Jerk Ass move, however, as he'd only just gotten done burying his previous wife.

Live Action TV

Bewitched - It's established in the early seasons of the show that Samantha and Darrin's romance was pretty rapid. Short enough for neither set of parents, nor Darrin's social circle, to know till after the wedding.
Doctor Who - "The Girl In The Fireplace" he gets to the point where he's willing to take Reinette on as a companion after what is for him a few hours. In her case though she's been infatuated with her 'Imaginary Friend' "Fireplace Man" since she was seven due to her being on The Slow Path.
- In fact, the Doctor goes through with this on a regular basis. He generally only needs one adventure with someone before he offers to take him/(usually) her along on a trip through the great Timey Wimey Ball.
- To be fair, it's unlikely that the Doctor would keep running across the same people, so he'd end up with no companions if he waited to get to know them. Although Adam Mitchell was an interesting backfire.
Ross and Emily from Friends
Don't forget Matt and Sarah's first date marriage on Seventh Heaven, though they did have a big wedding several months later.
The final episode of The Vicar Of Dibley.
The main plot of Dharma And Greg is that the Odd Couple got married after only going on one date.
Subverted in How I Met Your Mother when Ted gets engaged to Stella after only a few months of dating, and very few visible dates—but then Stella calls off the wedding at the last minute, and multiple episodes leading up to the wedding call attention to the rush to the altar.
Kind of played with in a Venezuelan telenovela this troper saw some years ago. The mistmached couple of a pampered architect and a construction worker meet and fall in love with passion and true honesty, then get a quick marriage using the looophole of "legalizing" a long concubinary relationship (they only have lees than a month of knowing), so she can get away from her family. Unfortunately they get in an accident who not ony separates them, but also gives her Easy Amnesia and puts her in the custody of a millionaire who finds her. The Love Triangle ensues when she falls in love with this second man, and then her husband (now a rich man) finally finds her.

Video Games

Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride makes The Hero choose between three girls: Bianca, Nera, and Debora. Of those three, the only one he's spent any time with is childhood friend Bianca (whom he hasn't seen since he was six), and the game seems geared towards her as the "right choice". (At least the remake removes most of the Guilt Based Gaming angle...)

Web Comics

Hasting's long string of divorces in Ugly Hill is partly due to him marrying new women at the drop of a hat.
Fred and Faye in Something Positive were married after knowing each other only two months. Many years later, Faye talks about this:
Faye: When we first married, you asked if I regretted rushing into it after just two months of dating. I said no, but I do ... Two months was too long. I'd have married you after the first date.
- Followed next day by one of the biggest Wham Episodes ever.

Western Animation

Disney Animated Canon
- The Little Mermaid- Actually it was Love At First Sight on her part, but he took about two days to come around but was then brainwashed.
- Aladdin - He fell head over heels for her after an afternoon. She was ready to smooch him at that point, but it took about three days tops to decide she wanted to marry him. That being said their engagement did at least last the entirety of the Animated Series and two Direct-to-Video movies.
- Pocahontas - A few days again but here, it's subverted because they end up not getting together forever at the end; in Pocahontas II: Journey to the New World she gets together with John Rolfe the man the historical Pocahontas actually married but getting to the point where she's willing to sacrifice her life for him counts.
- Brother Bear II- Okay they were childhood friends but she hadn't seen him in years and few days with him was enough to make her give up her humanity and get herself turned into a bear to be with him!
- Beauty and the Beast actually takes place over the course of three seasons, according to background art and Word Of God, but to a casual viewer, it might look like three days, especially considering how long Lefou spends sitting in the snow.
  - Ironically, in one version of the tale, it takes place over several years and Honour (as the Beauty is called) doesn't even want to get to know the Beast for several months. It takes her escaping (more than once), some developmental story, and the Beast being less of a misanthropic bully for the romance to even get started.
- Sleeping Beauty - Aurora and prince Phillip meet in the woods, he chats her up with some cheesy pick-up lines ("You have met me before - in your dreams"), and they immediately go home to tell their parents/guardians that they are in love and are going to get married. Without even knowing the first names of their chosen one!
- Cinderella is literally a one date marriage. Ditto for Snow White. To be fair, the Prince was going to be in more scenes, but those got cut when the animators were having a difficult time animating him in that primitive era. Still, this troper doesn't recall any of those scenes being dating scenes.
- As far as we know, both of the main couples in 101 Dalmatians. But, hey, maybe they had some offscreen dates.
- Lady And The Tramp: Technically they only had one really long date. And a lot of fights. But things work out in the end!
Non-Disney
- Fairly Oddparents: Vicky and Ricky fell in love pretty quickly too, but then again, Timmy wished for the perfect man for Vicky.
- Fern Gully: Like Pocahontas, Crysta decides to stay as figurehead and leader of her people rather than go with Zack. Still, it got pretty intense in the short time they were together.

Real Life

French president Nicolas Sarkozy: get divorced in October 2007, find a new girlfriend in december of the same year, get married in February 2008: the whole process took little more than 100 days.
- Of course, he is the president and she is Carla Bruni.
Saturday Night Live 's Fred Armisen and Mad Men 's Elisabeth Moss: SNL does a Mad Men sketch. Amy Poehler is supposed to play Moss' character but she goes into labor a few hours before showtime. Moss happens to be in New York, so they bring her in at the last minute to do the sketch. She meets the cast members, and when she meets Armisen, in the words of someone else, "it was like a bolt of electricity. Everyone in the room felt it." They start dating and three months later announce their engagement; they are now (October 2009) married.
The infamous 2000 Reality TV show Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire, which saw 50 contestants try to win the heart of a millionaire who they had never even seen, let alone met, resulted in a woman marrying a stranger in front of 22 million people. The total length of the marriage you ask? About a month and a half.
- The makers of the show, being a bit Genre Savvy about the whole thing, had them sign annulment agreements before they got married.
For other examples, see Troper Tales.