Hearts flutter as the door opens. In she walks, in her white tulle haze, towards the dewy-eyed groom waiting for her at the other end. I've often said weddings are 'good for the soul'.
But let me break this to you now - if you're after some wedding wonderment, Rachel Getting Married isn't the movie to see.
In fact it plays out what sadly is many people's pre-wedding experience. Slamming doors, cutting sentences hurled across the room and even a punch or two mar the prenup festivities for Rachel Buchman (Rosemarie DeWitt), as she prepares for her wedding to her fiancé, Sidney (Tunde Adebimpe).
The spark in the powder keg is Rachel's younger sister Kym (Anne Hathaway), who has emerged from nine months in rehab to be her bridesmaid.
As she walks into the wedding camp, she soils the bliss and excitement with a reminder of a painful family history, and a wrestle with addiction that is still with her, despite the progress she has made in her rehabilitation.
However the movie does deliver on the promise in its title: there is music, there are crazy speeches, a wedding cake in the shape of a blue elephant(!), there is that wonderful chemistry of two very different groups of people becoming family, and there are enough laughs, excitement, anticipation and joy to give it a lift.
Director Jonathan Demme says he wanted this film to look like "the most beautiful home movie ever made" - scenes were never rehearsed and rarely planned. This, along with a documentary filming style, lends an intimacy and spontaneity that makes you feel like you're there clinking glasses with these families and spying on their not-so-hidden struggles and tensions.
And as you look around, the awkward, loud, annoying presence of a girl who doesn't fit is hard to miss, as her 'rehab talk' stifles the obvious joy that is meant to come with pre-wedding festivities. Kym is the girl in the Renoir who seems a world away from the revelers around her.
And before long we find out why: Kym has done something dreadful, the guilt of which she seemingly can't escape. It clouds her relationships and hangs on her like a cloak she can't shake.
Behind Kym's outbursts and obvious turmoil, we are shown a family still dealing with this tragic burden. They have had to put aside their own grief, rights and needs again and again to keep picking Kym up.
Anne Hathaway was nominated for an Oscar for this role - and it's easy to see why. She makes you want to yell at her to 'Shut-up!', but before you can get the word out, she makes you choke on your rebuke.
For behind those restless searching eyes, we cannot help but see ourselves, overwhelmed by our own weight, imprisoned by the wrongs we have done that we can't seem to shrug off.
I'm not just clutching at straws here. In one scene, Kym blatantly says she is unable to believe in a God who forgives. In another she tearfully argues that even if she was Mother Teresa now, it would not be enough, betraying the fear that a sin once committed will never leave us.
But it is the themes of forgiveness and redemption that make this film stay with you, days after you've seen it.
In Rachel, elegantly played by deWitt, we see a glimpse of our Father as she holds out her arms to the sister who has brought her worry and grief on her wedding day.
It is perhaps a little surprising at times that the film is called Rachel Getting Married and not Kym Getting Out of Rehab.
Nonetheless it is worth a watch. Debra Winger, who comes back to the screen as Rachel and Kym's emotionally distant mother, joins a cast ranging from the starlet Hathaway to the director's own friends.
But as we live our well-educated and largely prosperous lives, this film is also a healthy reminder that we keep company with addicts and outsiders as we stand before our God with no viable word to say in our own defense.
It reminds us of our overwhelming need for forgiveness, a forgiveness that has come at a great cost, but that is our only hope.
Further, as we look into Kym's desperate eyes, we must also see our unsaved neighbours looking back at us. Will we extend arms of grace to them?
