HOLLYWOOD — TNT’s “Wedding Day,” which premieres Tuesday, is a show aimed straight for the heart strings by way of the tear ducts, but it may stir up as much anger as joy.

Following the blueprint of the failed “Extreme Makeover: Wedding Edition,” the producers of “Wedding Day” select a deserving couple who cannot afford their dream wedding and, with the help of devoted family and friends, give it to them. (Or as close to it as those sponsors donating goods and services will allow.)
If there is a certain product-placement queasiness factor — the shots of Chandon, the rehearsal dinner speech by a sponsor’s rep — “Wedding Day” is still a welcome antidote to shows such as “The Bachelor/Bachelorette,” “Hitched or Ditched” and “Bridezillas” in which heterosexual marriage is used as either a game-show prize or backdrop for peevishly bad behavior.
But in this time of national marital discord, with the very definition of the institution under perpetual debate and revision, no wedding is just a wedding. At least not on television.
“Wedding Day’s” celebration of the Big Day seems strangely political in its timing. Especially in California, where in summer 2008 the news was filled with the images of thousands of gay and lesbian couples ecstatically taking their vows, an option subsequently denied others by the passage of Proposition 8.
Unlike so many other couple-based reality shows — “Wife Swap” comes to mind, as does more recently, “Jon & Kate Plus 8” — “Wedding Day” takes marriage, the ritual and the institution, seriously. Very seriously.
Although it is essentially a “Queen for a Day” battle of pathos, with the couples sending “audition” tapes to prove that they are worthy enough to receive a bunch of really good free stuff, one of the requirements seems to be that all the participants understand that a wedding is more than a fancy event. It is a milestone, a moment in which two people become something more, a metamorphosis that requires the aid of a community.
This idea turns “Wedding Day,” intentionally or not, into a big satin and sequin raspberry to those who can’t legally enter into the state of matrimony and undercuts those who argue that civil unions allow gays and lesbians the same legal rights as marriage. Can you imagine a show titled “Civil Union Day?”
This doesn’t mean “Wedding Day” isn’t classy or heartwarming. Hosts Alan Dunn and Diann Valentine have extensive experience in high-end event planning (not to mention access to exceptional teeth whiteners) and it shows — the weddings are lovely, the tears of joy sincere.
They also made the smart decision to enlist the aid of family and friends so the show winds up being more about the power of kinship than product placement. The couples are attractive and appealing and offer the requisite back-story proof that love conquers all.
In the first show, the couple’s initial wedding was canceled when the bride suffered a devastating car accident that left her in the hospital for weeks, and in a wheelchair for months.
The second couple put off their wedding when their pregnancy grew complicated and their newborn had to undergo kidney surgery. (She’s fine now and completely adorable.) Both couples are also blessed with friends and family who are loving, well-spoken and willing to put in what appears to be many hours of fairly hard labor building the venues for the event.
Not everyone considers a wedding the most important day in a person’s life, of course. If you are one of those who feel the white dress is an absurd sexist throwback or that the expense of an all-the-trimmings event amounts to little more than cultural blackmail by the multibillion-dollar wedding industry, you should probably find something else to watch. Indeed, hearing a woman who has survived a life-threatening car crash declare that it has been her lifelong dream to get married in Manolo Blahniks may give even the biggest wedding junkie pause. (Really? That’s been your lifelong dream? Honey, dream bigger.)
But for those who like weddings, it’s fun to watch the friends pull together to make a stained glass door or a chandelier, and easy to feel the couple’s overwhelming excitement as they get swept up in the glamour and joy of it all. Because getting married is, and should be, a very big deal.
For everyone.