Betsy's Wedding Synopsis & Summary

Offbeat fashion student Betsy Hopper (Molly Ringwald) and her straight-laced investment-banker fiancé, Jake Lovell(Dylan Walsh), just want an intimate little wedding reception, but Betsy's father, Eddie (Alan Alda), a Long Island construction contractor, feels so threatened by Jake's rich WASP parents (Nicolas Coster and Bibi Besch) that he blows the ceremony up into a bank-breaking showpiece, sending his wife, Lola (Madeline Kahn), into a financial panic. Pressure from Betsy's extended family to include their joint Jewish and Italian-Catholic heritage in the ceremony doesn't do much to assuage the title character's worries, nor does the lovelorn bitterness of her older sister, Connie (Ally Sheedy), who's single, her parents assume, because she has the audacity to pursue the unfeminine profession of police officer. With all of his funds tied up into the money pit of a house he's building, Betsy's dad has to turn to his crooked brother-in-law, Oscar (Joe Pesci), for financial assistance, and soon a soft-spoken but menacing young mobster named Stevie Dee (Anthony LaPaglia) is supervising Eddie's construction project and casting his romantic aspirations toward the clueless Connie. Underworld hijinks and unconventional matrimonial practices ensue in this broad domestic comedy written and directed by star Alan Alda. - Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide