Real Wedding Crashers to take over TV screen

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A justice of the peace takes a cell phone call just as the bride and groom exchange vows during one ceremony.

In the middle of another, U.S. marshals swoop in to arrest a fugitive in an orange jump suit. And a sky-diver drops in on yet a third wedding from 5,000 feet.

These are but a few of the offbeat moments a group of prank-loving brides and grooms will share with their unsuspecting wedding guests, and a national TV audience, when "The Real Wedding Crashers" debuts next month on NBC. The premiere date is yet to be announced.

Created by the makers of MTV's popular celebrity prank series "Punk'd," which returns for its eighth and final season in April, NBC's new hidden-camera show borrows its title from the 2005 hit comedy film "Wedding Crashers."

But unlike the movie starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson as womanizers who sneak into weddings to hit on female guests, the point of "The Real Wedding Crashes" is not sexual conquest.

Instead, it features improvisational performers who conspire with brides and grooms to infiltrate six weddings and pull off practical jokes that fly in the face of matrimonial decorum.

"The idea behind the show is 'let's do something a little bit different,'" said executive producer Jason Goldberg, who created the series with his "Punk'd" co-host and producing partner, actor Ashton Kutcher. "The bride and groom put together, with our wedding crashers, a night that they'll remember for the rest of their lives."

From an over-eager wedding planner who starts tearing open gifts and writing thank-you notes during the reception, to a deliberately double-booked wedding chapel, to a pastor who interrupts the "I do's" to take a phone call, the couples find plenty to test the sensibilities of Emily Post.

In one of the show's more elaborate stunts, actors posing as law enforcement officers board a bus carrying guests to a reception in Las Vegas and advise the passengers to be on the lookout for a fugitive white-collar criminal.

Later, the wedding is brought to an abrupt standstill as a helicopter hovers overhead, and supposed federal officers converge on a man in an orange jumpsuit running nearby.

Goldberg said producers went out of their way to avoid gags that were mean-spirited. They even choreographed a number of tender moments, such as helping to arrange for two divorced parents who had not spoken in 10 years to dance at their son's wedding.

"It was beautiful, absolutely beautiful," Goldberg said.

Although the weddings were entirely planned and paid for by the producers, Goldberg said he was surprised at how many couples were attracted to the idea turning their big day into prime-time entertainment.

Some 25,000 couples responded to notices placed on the Internet and in various wedding publications, he said.

Reuters/Nielsen