‘The Wedding Coach’s’ Gay Wedding Episode Is a Wild Ride Through Gay Performative Excellence

Weddings are about tradition, period. Everyone grows up attending weddings, seeing the traditions, and then forming immovable ideas of how their life will neatly fit into those traditions. That never happens, obviously, and that’s why a show like Netflix’s The Wedding Coach exists—to remind couples in the deep end of event planning hell that this whole ceremony should be fun. But gay people? We grow up dreaming of a traditional wedding and then, if you’re like me, you kiss a guy for the first time and realize, “Oh, wow, well, I guess my traditional wedding will be missing a bride!” Gay marriage has no real traditions yet, which makes sense considering that the legalization of gay marriage is younger than Netflix’s Grace and Frankie. We can do whatever!

Herein lies the confounding conundrum at the heart of The Wedding Coach episode “Festival of Fights”—and here’s your SPOILER WARNING because I must write about everything. Meet our couple, Chad and Anthony. They’ve enlisted wedding coach Jamie Lee to help them plan their special day… which is actually a special weekend. A weekend long festival. With drag queens, food trucks, “juice recovery,” a pool party, yoga, a hot-air balloon, a Ferris wheel, and multiple “silent discos” which, after googling, just sounds like an infinitely more expensive way to dance to “Hey Ya!”

Oh—and their guest list has exploded from 150 invitees to—let me spell it out—one thousand human individual beings. Chad and Anthony have escalated the creative liberty given to gays re: weddings to Everest heights. Jamie your work is cut out for you! Luckily you have SNL’s Punkie Johnson there to… uh, silently clutch as the events redefine the meaning of the word “extra.”

First up: the dance routine.

Chad needs his wedding to kick off with a—spelling it out again—twenty minutes of time dance routine. There are 14 backup dancers, intense choreography, and, as we’ll find out later in the episode, spark launchers? Spark fountains? Spark shooters? Sparks. Lots of sparks. Punkie says that this whole thing is like a Super Bowl halftime show, and Chad replies that, yeah, funny she said that because the Super Bowl did inspire him.

Mind you, as much as Chad is very much a dancer, Anthony is equally—if not more so—not a dancer. He does not take to choreography well, and now he has to do a festival performance à la Beyoncé at Coachella on a day that’s already stressful enough.

So. Lest it sound like I’m mercilessly dunking on Chad and Anthony, let’s talk about something: performative gay excellence. Every gay man feels this pressure, whether you engage in it or not on social media. Now that we are here, queer, loud, and proud, there is a vibe that every gay man has to be fit, flawless, fun, and fierce—or they have to be actively pushing against that. There is no gay man on Instagram who is somehow unaware of this push and pull. We’re all on one side of this, either trying to live up to a bonkers level “yaaass werk kween” perfection, or those of us who intentionally don’t (and wrongly act like that makes them superior). There is a—quite frankly bizarre!—rivalry between gay men that makes us all want to one-up each other. “I’m not like those gays” is a phrase that’s used to punch up and down. I am guilty of this, too. I was guilty of this while watching this episode, and I’m guilty of it while writing this article. Wow, this took a turn, didn’t it?!

But I want Chad and Anthony to know that I get it. When Chad opens up about his insecurity, how he can’t let a disagreement with his partner rest until it has been definitely solved—hey, same. This drives my husband crazy, too! Chad wants to do both a Britney and Gaga section in his wedding dance routine to publicly assert his gayness, and I take heavily edited kaftan and swimsuit selfies and post them on Instagram and then link to it in an article I am writing for work because I too am a gay man who is desperate for validation from other gay men on social media.

…..

… But still, y’all, a festival is too much. And I say this as someone whose wedding ceremony was a a two-hour comedy variety show. Does that fact about me beg for explanation? Maybe, but this article is about Chad and Anthony and my increasing understanding of their plight (but not the “silent disco” and “juice recovery” parts).

There’s also a serious scene where Jamie—who, by the f’ing way, works miracles in this episode through patience and positivity and empathy—takes Chad and Chad’s mom shopping for an outfit for a wedding festival… which has not been a thing before so, what’s the dress code here? Chad wants his mom to bring the breathtaking elegance since they’re down a bride. Chad’s mom is a laidback California gal who likes flowy dresses and chill vibes.

Again, this is where the pressure to bring what is expected strangles the perfectly fine reality of the situation. Chad’s mom is going to be beautiful no matter what, because what’s actually beautiful about her is the fact that she is excited about going to her gay son’s gay wedding. A parent coming to their gay kid’s wedding, or a gay kid feeling like they can even invite their parent to their gay wedding is still—even six seasons of Grace and Frankie later—not a given.

In an actually shocking turn of events for a show called The Wedding Coach, Chad and Anthony call off the wedding. They admit to themselves that planning the wedding festival was adding a toxic level of stress to their lives—stress that is not needed in a marriage! They found out they can’t organize a festival together. Cool! You will literally never be called upon to do that again! This gives Jamie a chance to talk them through the process of calling off a wedding while still expressing their commitment to each other, which is honestly a side of the wedding experience that you just don’t see on these happily-ever-after-no-matter-what shows. It takes a lot to admit that kind of imperfection publicly, and to also be at peace with it. Chad and Anthony are. They love each other and they’re gonna get married when the time is right. For now, though, why not just throw an intimate party for their friends and family to celebrate their love for each other?

Okay, well, we all have different definitions of intimate.

Stream The Wedding Coach "Festival of Fights" on Netflix