Misused: Wedding Smashers

This trope wants to be about the hero busting his own wedding, while the examples, for the most part, are about the hero crashing somebody else's wedding. Understandable, because this is happening more frequently and apparently is not being covered by any other trope. Should the description be changed to be about both types of wedding crashing or shall the "wrong" examples be removed?

edited 12th Jan '15 3:12:41 PM by eroock

If the problem is who is exactly the "wedding smasher", then change the trope name to focus more in the presence of a fight in the wedding, rather than in the authors of the fight. For example, "An ass-kicking wedding".

Ultimate Secret Wars

To me, it looks like it's about someone (e.g. enemies) smashing the hero's wedding.

I don't think it should be broadened to include the hero smashing someone else's wedding. A hero's own wedding turning into a brawl is a pretty common trope by itself ^note (at least, in superhero comics; I don't remember a single superhero wedding that didn't feature a fight of some sort). I think the name should just be changed to be more indicative of the trope.

The hero smashing someone else's wedding is usually Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace and "The Graduate" Homage Shot. Are there any examples that aren't already covered by these tropes?

edited 13th Apr '15 7:18:29 AM by Rjinswand

Any other ideas how to solve this issue?

I am not sure if the distinction between "one's own wedding" and "someone else's wedding" is important. Most weddings I see in works are important.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I think "hero's own wedding" has some narrative importance.

A wedding is supposed to be a great day in a person's life. But we're shown that a hero's chosen life is so dangerous, even on this day he can't be safe. So, a day that should be about love and partying, turns into a grand fight with the hero's enemies. Something like that.

I had to reread the description several times, because unless it was rewritten since this thread has started, I'm honestly not sure where the OP's impression that this trope "wants to be" about the hero busting their own wedding even comes from. The description indicates that it's definitely about a wedding day getting ruined by the groom's or bride's enemies showing up uninvited, without any mention of this being orchestrated by either of them. A review of the examples supports this.

If Hero Smashes Own Wedding deserves its own trope, that's what YKTTW is for. I see nothing to fix here at all.

edited 13th Oct '15 11:05:08 AM by Morgenthaler

You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"

I think the two meanings present on that page are:

• Hero's wedding is smashed by villains
• Villain's wedding is smashed by heroes

If that's the case, we should decide how to handle this. Will it be good to stand as is, or do a split? Then again, splitting may add a bit of clutter.

edited 13th Oct '15 2:24:50 PM by Berrenta

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report

I think the best course would be to split off these two as subtropes. Like this:

• Wedding Smashers: Any wedding being smashed.
  • Hero Wedding Smashers: Hero's wedding smashed by villains.
  • Villain Wedding Smashers: Villain's wedding smashed by heroes.

edited 13th Oct '15 2:57:46 PM by Rjinswand

Hmmm, seems plausible and coherent. I may go ahead and see if I can sort them into those categories later on today, and see if a split can be possible.

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report

Some works don't have villains.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Well, "villains" can be broadened to include monsters, bandits etc. Anything that doesn't fit a broad definition of "heroes" and "villains" would just go under the main Wedding Smashers trope, anyway.

---

As an aside. The title, Wedding Smashers, is dangerously similar to Wedding Crashers, to the point where it might be a bit confusing.

edited 14th Oct '15 12:06:07 PM by Rjinswand

Well Wedding Crashers was the preexisting term for this decades before the movie tried to capitalize on it.

Did some rudimentary sorting. All examples are sorted based on whether it's the hero or the villain that crashes. Though there are no media headings, all examples are placed in relative order, so the associated media could be determined (wouldn't hurt to have media headings, though...).

It's under Sandbox.Wedding Smashers, so in case anyone wants to help sort examples, that would be great.

edited 14th Oct '15 7:17:44 PM by Berrenta

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report

Great job! Did my own version of the example sorting based on yours, see it under "Rjinswand's version" in the same sandbox.

At the moment, I see 3 meanings that could be split into their own subtropes:

• Villains Smash Heroes' Wedding (the current trope description)
• Villains Smash Civilians' Wedding
• Heroes Smash Villains' Wedding

However, there's also a huge list of examples that need more context, so maybe they would go into other meanings as well. Any help with these would be appreciated.

edited 17th Oct '15 7:30:57 AM by Rjinswand

The trope description talks about a hero's own wedding being busted up, tying it back to It's Not You, It's My Enemies (ie, the trope is "hero's life as a hero interferes with their personal life yet again, this time at their wedding") while most of the examples are more generic "someone's wedding turns into a fight scene".

The more generic "wedding turns into fight" trope seems to be covered by Ballroom Blitz. I'd suggest renaming this trope to make it more clear that it's about the hero's wedding being disrupted by villainous activity, not just "fight happens at wedding".

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

We may end up having to migrate those that fit better in Ballroom Blitz to there if they weren't there already.

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report

I think a trope about weddings being smashed could exist on its own. It's specific enough to be a subtrope of Ballroom Blitz.

"Hero's wedding gets smashed by villains" would be subtrope of that trope. As well as other possible subtropes that I discussed in my previous post.

It could go like this:

• Ballroom Blitz — any kind of party gets crashed
  • Wedding Smashers — any wedding gets crashed
    • Heros Wedding Crashed By Villains
    • Villains Wedding Crashed By Heroes
    • etc

So, to clarify, I suggest that rather than renaming Wedding Smashers to fit with the description, we just retool it to the more general meaning, and YKTTW a subtrope about heroes' weddings getting crashed by villains instead.

edited 17th Oct '15 8:15:40 AM by Rjinswand

Crashing a wedding really isn't about a 'fight' it's about being uninvited and showing up anyway as well as causing some kind of disruption / scene in what is planned to be a perfect well oiled machine. 99% of the time things don't go as planned even without Crashers, they just add to the problems.

If anything the supertrope should be about that.

edited 17th Oct '15 8:17:35 AM by Memers

All examples on the page are about some kind of fight or disturbance happening. None are about some quiet guy who just came uninvited and sat in the corner drinking a cocktail.

This, of course, needs to be clarified in the description.

edited 17th Oct '15 8:17:40 AM by Rjinswand

I said 'some kind of disturbance'. Like say the uninvited father of the groom show up makes a huge scene and passes out in front of the main table at the reception, no fight but still crashes the wedding.

edited 17th Oct '15 8:21:13 AM by Memers

Hm, I see. So you suggest:

• Any kind of disturbance at a wedding
  • Fight at a wedding
    • Villains start a fight at heroes' wedding
    • Heroes start a fight at heroes' wedding
    • etc

---

[Ah, nevermind]

edited 17th Oct '15 8:28:08 AM by Rjinswand

• The Not So Perfect White Wedding: a wedding that is planned to be perfect but snowballs as problems constantly arise. including a harp player who goes into labor in the middle of the ceremony, a bride sitting on the cake, a groom that gets a reverse Mohawk. the mother of the groom is murdered
  • Party Crashers Wedding Crashers, uninvited guests which cause a scene such as accosting brides maids, objecting to the marriage etc.
  • Heroic Wedding Interruptors the girl is getting married to someone she or the plot doesn't like, time to try and pull a crash and grab. 99% of the time this is from the Heros Po V. Fighting is not necessarily required as the 'villain' might just fall asleep
  • Villain Wedding Interrupters: got the perfect wedding with a happy couple, well nope the Villain just crashed and now you have possibly a Damsel in Distress situation and so on. Still from the Heros Po V.
  • Ballroom Blitz, Actual ballroom combat.

edited 17th Oct '15 8:41:21 AM by Memers

Villain Wedding Interruptors has at least 2 different types:

• "Villains crash a civilian wedding and usually kidnap the bride"
• "A hero can't have a wedding without their enemies attacking"

and maybe also

• "A hero's wedding gets interrupted because villains attack something else"

Seriously, look up the Sandbox.

Ballroom Blitz would be a supertrope to all "fighting at a wedding" tropes.

edited 17th Oct '15 8:50:00 AM by Rjinswand