It’s a gorgeous day. Really, the perfect summer day – not too hot, bright sunshine, lovely breeze. But since I don’t know what’s open, what we are allowed to do, what we aren’t allowed to do, plus I deserve a treat for going back to my actual office this week, I’m in my comfy chair with another lovely Lifetime Movie to deal with. Again, I don’t know anything about this one other than what it says in the tiny blurb before I hit play, so let’s hit play and watch A Wedding to Die For.
Creepy piano music and we see the interior of some kind of non-Catholic church. It’s someone’s wedding, and the groom is wearing a smoky eye -that, or he’s really sick. He’s getting ready, getting punk’d by his brother/best man about lost rings, and he gets a cupcake delivered “For My Beloved” – George and Helena are getting ready to get married, and just at the vows, George isn’t doing too well. He doesn’t get to say “I do” – he gets to know that he was poisoned by his fiance before he dies (she’s not subtle about letting him know although no one else can hear). This was all during the opening credits. 
Fast forward to winter, Rebecca is in an upstate NY town for her brother’s wedding. And then we head to a bakery, where Helena from the first scene is now a blonde, engaged to Rebecca’s brother, Charlie, who is blandly handsome in a “brawny paper towel guy” kind of way. Rebecca is a disappointment to her mother because she’s divorced. Can we all slap the mom right now?
At the family dinner with Charlie, Rebecca, Helena, and the parents, Helena is way too much. Helena is already exhibiting the crazy in the Lifetime way, by narrowing her eyes and faking smiles and all sorts of other over the top facial expressions at Rebecca whenever Rebecca says anything that Helena doesn’t like. Then we get to a scene where Helena is talking to her reflection, who is evil. She also tells her reflection not to ruin things, not like last time. But she’s calm when she gets back into the dining room, which is decorated in some kind or rural pastoral painted scene above the wainscoting that I refuse to believe was a choice by any of these WASPy people in this movie.
Helena has brought cupcakes, but when someone else has brought sample cakes for the wedding, and this lady with her cold-weather officiousness has already insulted Helena’s cupcakes and says “haven’t we met before?” which makes Becca suspicious, Helena is not having any of it. Then Helena flat out insults the nice lady with the cake, goes to the kitchen and smushes one of her cupcakes in her own hand. Rebecca checks on Helena and calls her out in one of her lies but accepts more lies and leaves Helena alone. Is anyone following this so far?
Old Cake lady looks up Helena’s cake design website, and is convinced she knows her from a bake-off in Toronto – and is able to prove it (Helena was “Mrs. Helena Clark” back in Canada). But Old Cake Lady didn’t lock her door because Helena is there in gloves and a dark coat and full of apologies and poison. Old Cake Lady is not having any of her crap until Helena does more flattery and then she gets Old Cake Lady up onto a stepladder before Helena ups and hits her in the head with a rolling pin. Now a few things to point out, as someone who used to work in a bakery. A) Bakeries do not leave rolling pins on their counters – that’s kitchen stuff. B) Bakeries put their stuff away and clean their shelves before closing and they C) Lock Their Freaking Doors at night. Also – personal point, if a bakery doesn’t use string to close boxes, but uses tape instead, they are a lazy bakery. Helena does the villain thing where she gloats and says “No one gets in the way of my happiness.”
Charlie keeps stating that Helena is a good person with strong morals, but also points out that he doesn’t know much about his fiance, and he certainly doesn’t appreciate Becca being the sole voice of reason about his cuckoo bananapants girlfriend.
Next day, Becca sees the police outside Old Cake Lady’s Bakery. Helena tells her that Old Cake Lady is dead, but when the other bystanders don’t know that, how does Helena? I’m sure Rebecca will get to that question eventually. We can also point out the date when this movie was made because there is a Rogue One poster in the window of one of the shops in this small town.
We get a little backstory : Helena was adopted and tracked down her birth mother. Becca was also adopted. Helena is also wearing the most absurd outfit if she is going to go bake stuff – an A-line dress with crinoline and heels? Who wears that – especially in a NY winter?
Charlie and his dad own a hardware store, and his best friend comes by to show him about a $300K house – the pictures of which make it look more like a $750K house. Charlie asks BFF Martin to show Helena the house, and Martin does not want to do that because he’s normal and knows Helena is crazy. And we get more crazy because the florist for the wedding is one of Charlie’s ex-girlfriends (from HIGH SCHOOL GET THE HELL OVER IT, HELENA) and there’s a lot of passive-aggressive bitchiness and poor flower lady is going to get it soon.
Next scene is Helena freaking the f-ck out talking to the tiny groom wedding cake topper, and then her reflection taunts her and Helena totally loses it before Martin shows up to show her the house. Before we get to the house, though, we hear a chat between Becca and mom about how weddings are hard, and we should all cut Helena some slack. Really? Martin didn’t do a good job in making Helena feel ok about Flower Lady Ex, and the kitchen in the house they were in did NOT match the kitchen in the picture he showed Charlie on his phone.
Becca is using her computer skills to set up a website about the wedding, and she and her mom are also throwing Helena a bridal shower, both of which is not going to go down well, we all know this. OMG, the Flower Lady has shown up at the bar where Charlie and Helena are having a date night. Crazy Eyes Helena is back, even more so when she sees them hugging (even though Flower Lady is the NICEST person ever. Please don’t burn down Flower Lady’s Shop, Crazy Eyes).
Helena is home and glowering in the mirror again – how many mirrors does she own? Flower Lady and husband have come home to their dark house and Helena has just brained husband with a shovel. Flower Lady has a fantastic marble island in her kitchen which she bleeds all over before Helena freaking kills her. So no fire, but death anyway.
Cut to brother of groom from first wedding in the beginning, who sees the website that Becca set up and is now triumphant that he found the girl who killed his brother.
I’d like to point out that the seasons are very inconsistent in this movie – it was winter and now it’s fall? (Snow on the ground, and now the trees still have leaves. Does it work backwards in upstate New York?) Brother of Groom calls Becca to spill the beans about Helena (how a) she was married before the wedding at the beginning b) she WAS married to groom (they’d eloped, and the wedding was just for show) and c) she got a bunch of money from groom’s death and then split town. No one other than Becca wants to hear anything bad about Helena, but groom’s brother is heading to NY to confront the situation.
Charlie just found out that Flower Lady is dead but luckily FL’s husband is in the hospital. He finds this out while at his parent’s house, where they are having a bizarre lunch of limp salad on glass plates, large tureens of soup, and some kind of sandwich. Look, people, it’s Soup and Salad, Soup and Sandwiches, or Sandwiches and Salad – NOT all three – that’s just too much food – how are you going to have room for a cookie? (During quarantine I’ve discovered too many cookies). God, Charlie is just so much in Denial, and he casts Becca’s divorce up to her to make her shut up, and seriously, Charlie, you suck. And their parents take Charlie’s side because of course they do.
Helena just asked Becca to be her maid of honor and it’s weird and awkward and makes Becca down her red wine like its milk after hot peppers. And the wedding shower that they throw her is attended by the town’s two African Americans, and the parents give her a check for $1000. And Becca offers to pick up Helena’s wedding dress, but it’s really to give her an opportunity to snoop at Helena’s rented house. Now all the leaves are brown and the sky is gray – so again we’re not sure what season we’re in.
Helena’s rented house is a gorgeous center-hall colonial. Helena then freaks out because she forgot her mini cupcake tins for her wedding cake (which apparently is a just a boring collection of vanilla cupcakes). So she’s heading home to get them while Becca is in mid-snoop – but luckily she doesn’t find her, and Becca gets her proof that Helena is a liar liar who lies.
OH CRAP Groom’s Brother from beginning has shown up at the parent’s house and the only one home is Helena decorating her boring-ass wedding cake. 
She then confesses to murdering the groom and beats him up with a frying pan in her in-laws’ house. The in-laws come home and she stages it to look like Brother attacked her and AGAIN no one believes Becca about the reality of the situation and how Cray-Cray Helena is, and AGAIN the parents stick up for Cray Cray and Charlie and push Becca out the back door like a bad dream. Is it because she’s a brunette?
Oh, wait – the police guy is also an African American, so that brings the total to 3. Charlie then tells Helena maybe we should push the wedding a few weeks, and then Helena predictably freaks out. Becca is out for some kind of drive, and Helena is poisoning cupcakes again – does she get poison in bulk? And then she offers the poison to Charlie, Mom and Dad, and she leaves the freaking poison on the counter. All three of them eat the cupcakes. (Notice – apparently it was just a sleeping drug, not like, you know, death poison).
Charlie passes out on the couch and Helena comes down in her off-the-rack wedding dress. She then confesses to killing both Flower and Cake Ladies and now has to make Charlie’s death look like an accident. Helena’s pancake makeup in this scene is very distracting. Before Helena can hit Charlie in the head with a heavy vase, Becca comes home and Helena decides to hit her instead. And now, for some reason, Helena is fixated on Becca – having a sister is more important than a husband and WOW PLOT TWIST – both Becca and Helena have the same birth mother. But Becca is not putting up with all this crap. Unfortunately, that’s not the right answer and Helena uses the vase, and then tries stabbing. Becca is resourceful and uses a cupcake tin to bitchslap Helena right into her dumbass wedding cake.
Oh heads up – it’s snowing again in magicland New York. Charlie and Judgmental Mom eat crow and apologizes to Becca for not believing her. Brother from the beginning is better and has not died, and Helena is in an institution – still exhibiting the crazy and hitting on the orderly who brought her a ham and cheese sandwich. She is clutching the wedding cake toppers – how is she allowed to have those in her institutionalized state? The last scene is Becca’s mirror self walking away from the institution aaaaand we’re done.
Husband nope’d out of this movie after the first 6 minutes, saying he likes the Hallmark ones instead. Younger Son wants to watch Justice League movies on Prime, and Older Son is off watching Golden Girls somewhere else. I feel like I could have taken a walk and it would have been a better use of my time, but then, what would you do without me watching these movies, you know, just so you don’t have to?
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