Burnett's "Wedding Day" worth committing to<br/>

Burnett's "Wedding Day" worth committing to

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-06-16 15:17

NEW YORK – Divorce stats be damned: Americans continue to devoutly, enthusiastically believe in weddings. So when Mark Burnett -- the man who made TV stars out of island starvelings, fifth-grade smarty-pants and Donald Trump's hair -- steps up into the wedding fray, stand back.

With TNT's "Wedding Day," he has fashioned a match made in heaven: a well-plotted "Extreme Makeover: Wedding Edition" for one lucky couple, who each week receive the wedding of their dreams.

Not everybody's eligible; the couple has to have an emotional backstory, and the pilot's is a lulu: Four days before Holli and Steve were to have been married last year, she was in a horrific car accident. Celebrity event planners and "Wedding Day" hosts swoop in like fairy godparents to make everything shiny, and then the show really takes off. Holli gets her dream wedding -- a "Sex and the City"-themed reception where she gets to walk down the aisle in Manolos (pathos alert: they're flats because of her accident-related hip injury).

It's all very pretty. But "Wedding Day" works best with its attention to unexpected details -- Holli and Steve's church gets a refurbished floor and new stained-glass window and local artisans (along with family and friends) work on both projects, which turns the celebration into a communal, it-takes-a-village production. On top of everything, the couple's in-progress home is finished and furnished for them. It's hard not to imagine Burnett tipping his chin at "Makeover": "Fix a house? Feh! We'll marry them and fix their house!"

"Wedding" has uneven moments; its early scenes are a soft-focus, talking-heads, "Dateline"-inspired snoozefest, but the pace picks up once the couple is in on the surprise. Holli's emotion, conveyed moistly through her eyeliner, can even get a jaded old TV reviewer choked up more than once.

So yes, "Wedding" is conventional. But so are weddings themselves, for the most part. Devotees will be delighted by the new series, and party planners should bring their notepad. It's a gentle, pleasant walk down the aisle.