The Magnificent Seven: The Top 7 WWE Weddings

Professional wrestling centers on the simulation of violence, buoyed by storylines of people not getting along for any number of reasons. WWE has a long history of pushing that envelope, putting plots and personalities ahead of the sporting elements of the business.

Part of the package is the wrestling wedding. While WWE’s certainly not the only promotion to promote weddings as special events, it has done so for a variety of purposes and in all sorts of outlandish ways. This week’s countdown focuses on the best of WWE’s weddings. A countdown like this might seem like an oxymoron, because wrestling weddings are notoriously bad—outrageous, unbelievable, illogical, predictable, and more often than not, not paying off in anyone actually ending up wedded. Think of the items featured on this countdown as guilty pleasures then. The criteria this week is anything but scientific, but I’m ranking in terms of weddings that were entertaining, memorable, and otherwise did a good job of storytelling either on their own terms or within the broader scheme of bigger stories that WWE was telling.

#7. Edge and Vickie Guerrero, 2008

At the end of 2007, Edge and Vickie Guerrero became aligned as World Heavyweight Champion/Championship contender and heel authority figure on Smackdown, who were involved in an affair. Interestingly enough, for all of their romantic entanglements and wedding related events, their actual wedding ceremony occurred off camera in the tradition of Pat Patterson winning the first Intercontinental Championship in Rio de Janeiro. Missing the ceremony is part of why this one falls at the bottom of the countdown, but the events surrounding the wedding, and having the a reception televised justified it making the cut for the number seven spot.

Edge and Guerrero’s engagement got off to a rocky start when rival Rey Mysterio interrupted the proposal. From there, matters got worse during the on-air reception when Triple H intervened to show a video of Edge getting physical with the wedding planner, portrayed by Alicia Fox. The weight of Edge’s infidelity may have been mitigated a bit months later when John Cena revealed another wrinkle for the troubled couple—that Guerrero had been hooking up with The Big Show.

Edge and Guerrero make the cut for embracing the trashiest elements of a WWE wedding scenario, and providing some good comedic fodder.

#6. Edge and Lita, 2005

In 2005, WWE cashed in on a heated backstage story that had leaked—the allegations that Edge and Lita were having an affair. The company had temporarily let Matt Hardy go, and Kane was oddly working as his stand-in in kayfabe, in which Edge had stolen Lita away from him.

In character, Lita wore as low-cut a wedding dress as possible. Meanwhile, Edge heeled it up to the max, playing Hardy’s music to tease the crowd with the prospect of the real-life jilted lover coming back. Add in Snitsky reading poetry, and the segment maxed out its heat potential, only for the not-so-surprising but still crowd-pleasing turn of Kane breaking through the bottom of the ring to interrupt the proceedings and wreak havoc.

#5. Kane and Lita, 2004

2004-2005 was a tumultuous time for Lita’s character. At this stage she was still playing a face, but starting down a dark path after Kane defeated Matt Hardy at SummerSlam to earn the right to marry her (man WWE contract law is a bitch). The result was a ceremony for which Lita wore a black dress, and Kane wore a glorious white tux. Trish Stratus heeled it up as Lita’s taunting maid of honor and Hardy tried to play the knight in shining armor and save his damsel in distress only to get beaten back.

For as completely absurd as this wedding and all of its surrounding circumstances were, I give this one props for actually seeing its wedding through with Kane and Lita getting hitched and leaving together—no small feat in the world of wrestling.

#4. Billy and Chuck

OK, I’ll admit that this one did not actually turn out to be a wedding—neither in the characters actually getting hitched or in them ultimately copping to meaning to getting married. Billy Gunn and Chuck Palumbo, after weeks of teasing a gay relationship, cut a testosteroned-up promo, telling their manager Rico he’d gone too far in arranging their commitment ceremony. This led to a split between the successful tag team and their manager, as Rico collaborated with Raw GM Eric Bischoff (disguised to officiate the wedding) and Three-Minute Warning in a beat down as Billy and Chuck turned face.

The way this angle wrapped up was largely a farce, in poor taste, and burned bridges with the GLAAD which had worked with WWE on promoting the ceremony, it nonetheless stood out as a memorable spectacle, and did succeed in gathering the company more attention than most angles of this ilk.

#3. The Undertaker and Stephanie McMahon

In early 1999, The Undertaker was at his darkest, heading up The Ministry of Darkness. Among his vilest acts was kidnapping Stephanie McMahon, who was still new on the scene generally portrayed as an innocent do-gooder at the time.

While it was campy to max, the Dark Wedding segment was nonetheless super memorable for the ominous visuals of Stephanie tied to a cross-like structure. The Ministry fought back Ken shamrock, The Big Boss Man, and The Big Show when they tried to interrupt the ceremony, only for Steve Austin to show up and save the day, brilliantly sold as Austin doing the right thing, despite his long-standing feud with the McMahons. Mr. McMahon looked on, emotionally thanking Austin for his help.

This wedding loses a little of its luster in retrospect, particularly for the WWF retconning pieces of the plot, with Mr. McMahon recast as “The Greater Power” and the mastermind of the whole thing. Just the same, the segment itself remains an iconic one from the Attitude Era.

#2. Test/Triple H and Stephanie McMahon

The WWF nicely built up the relationship between Test and Stephanie McMahon, particularly through Test fighting for his relationship, defeating disapproving brother Shane McMahon and winning him over to their side, and looking as though he might move up to the main event before too long.

Things took a sharp left turn when Triple H, recently feuding with Vince McMahon, interrupted the Test-Stephanie proceedings and introduced a video of his own wedding—taking an incapacitated Stephanie through a drive-in chapel in Las Vegas, and going on to imply that he’d sexually assaulted her unconscious body.

It was the Attitude Era, but even so, I’m not going to claim the angle was in good taste. Just the same, it succeeded in adding nuclear heat to the McMahon vs. Helmesley angle, leading to McMahon beating him for the WWF Championship, and then to their minor epic of a battle at the Armaggeddon PPV. While you can argue that this angle, too, loses something for the longer story the WWF told in which Stephanie was actually in on a plan with Triple H the whole time, I’d actually credit the company for telling a coherent story there, accounting for Stephanie’s justifiable anger at her father having set her up for the Dark Wedding earlier in the year. Moreover, the angle gave way to the McMahon-Helmesley Era. While you can argue The Authority was more polished, this earlier iteration was electric, and featured Triple H more or less at his athletic prime, and Stephanie as a fresh new heel.

#1. Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth

SummerSlam 1991 had one of the most unusual main events a pro wrestling PPV has ever seen, featuring not a match, a brawl, or even a heated promo, but rather a wedding. Moreover, it was a wedding between a wrestler portrayed as retired, and his old manager who’d never wrestled a match, with minimal other recognizable wrestling personalities of the day in the mix.

While there are so many ways in which this segment should not have worked, the WWF had something special in the form of Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth. Their love story had played out for WWF fans to over the course of over five years of programming, ranging from Savage working as a heel, to Savage as the face world champion, to Savage as the heel world champion, to years of estrangement. Through it all, Elizabeth was portrayed as a constant—good, innocent, and loving. Wrestling’s definitive good and pure female character.

By today’s standards, the segment may seem anticlimactic, but I’d argue it worked, particularly in its context, for being so straightforward and giving the fans the happy ending they were hoping for. Moreover, the reception, not televised until later, did have a storyline purpose, with Jake Roberts crashing the party and launching a profoundly personal issue that would lead Savage back to the ring.

Which WWE weddings would you add to the list and how would you order them? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Read more from Mike Chin at his website and follow him on Twitter @miketchin.