The Wedding Cottage (2023)

Vanessa Doyle is transitioning her professional life from being a wedding planner to creating/managing a so-far fledgling compendium of all things wedding in the US called Tying the Knot. Her major promotion is a contest to plan a wedding for the winning couple to their specification using the information listed in Tying the Knot. Vanessa thinks the major problem she will be facing is that the couple have requested the wedding in five weeks time to accommodate the groom Scott Bishop’s next military assignment overseas, but the bigger problem ends up being the venue they choose, the Wedding Cottage in Stony Bridge, VT, where the graduate student bride Amy Price’s parents and grandparents both got married. The problem is is that Vanessa did not vet the research work done as the Cottage has been closed for five years upon the passing of the owner/operators. Vanessa learns that the current owner, Evan Stanford, the former owners’ grandson, has just moved onto the property living in the annex. And while Vanessa is not quite at the level of developers as Evan has no intention of selling, she is only one rung below in terms of annoyances as he, a successful New York sculptor with a major case of artistic block, has come to Stony Bridge solely to regain his creative juices in preparation for a show for which he is required to produce one new piece. Even if Vanessa is able to convince Evan to let her use the Cottage for the wedding, she still has to be able to get it from its current run down shape to wedding ready in five weeks, all without letting Amy and Scott know what’s going on. In spending time together, Vanessa and Evan start to fall for each other. A potential obstacle for a relationship between them is if Evan believes she is only trying to get close to him for her own professional gain, both for this wedding, it not coming off meaning her business before it even gets off the ground, and in the long run in playing off his fame.—Huggo