Jenny's Wedding - review

Katherine Heigl plays Jenny, a hardworking social worker who is fed up of her family’s constant questions about when she will meet someone and settle down.

With her brother and sister both happily married with children, Jenny’s parents are keen to see all of their children settled, but what they don’t know is that Jenny is happily in a relationship with Kitty, but she hasn’t found the right time to tell them all.

Despite being together for 5 years, Jenny’s family have no idea Kitty is anything more than Jenny’s roommate, but when Jenny finally plucks up the courage to let them know she’s gay and getting married, they find this news hard to take.

Traditional and unable to accept Jenny’s decision, she and her parents become estranged with neither of them willing to back down and her parents ask her to not let the rest of the family or friends know as they don’t want their lives to be impacted. But when Jenny’s sister Ann sees Jenny and Kitty looking at wedding dresses, she works out the relationship and is shocked when she discovers their parents knew but chose to keep it secret.

With locals gossiping about Jenny, Eddie and Rose feel their relationship struggling under the strain of each other’s perspectives and the fact they’ve lost their daughter. It’s up to one of them to make the next move and when they realise that they either need to open up and accept Jenny or lose her forever, they begin to realise that their daughter’s happiness should be the priority, not who she marries.

I really enjoyed this movie and was surprised it hadn’t been advertised more when it was released this year, but I suppose not every movie can get the same level of publicity.

Co-starring Tom Wilkinson and Grace Gummer (Meryl Streep’s daughter), I found this movie to be a fair insight into how families can react when they learn something new, but also how their true meaning is to stick together no matter how tough things get.