Skip to the End

(sounds of fighting)
Humperdink (to the clergyman): Skip to the end.
(sounds of more fighting)

Humperdink: Man and wife! Say man and wife!

—The Princess Bride

The act of shortening a marriage ceremony due to outside circumstances.

This is when for some reason the actual ceremony has to be abbreviated or sped up, perhaps to thwart the Wedding Smashers. It can be either for the benefit of the Heroic Official Couple, or a plot by the Big Bad involving an Arranged Marriage. Whatever the reason, the ceremony needs to be sped up. A subversion can occur if the judge, priest or pastor refuses to alter the altar vows. This may become a plot point if leaving out parts of the ceremony invalidates the marriage.

Compare with Altar the Speed, when the wedding date is moved up due to outside circumstances.

Examples of Skip to the End include:

Film

• Joked about at the beginning, and then executed at the end of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
• The end of the film version of The African Queen. "I now pronounce you man and wife. You may proceed with the execution."
• In Irma La Douce, the groom (Jack Lemmon) needs to speed up the wedding because his wife-to-be is going into labor. The priest even starts speed-reading the wedding rites. In Latin.
• In Joe vs. The Volcano the marriage has to be rushed because the volcano god is getting hungry for his sacrifice and the groom has to jump in like NOW.
  • Or maybe the natives' traditional wedding ceremony is always done that fast; the film doesn't make it clear.
• In The Legend of Zorro the remarriage has to be rushed because the Zorro Bell is ringing.
• In Lethal Weapon 4, Riggs' wedding is sped up due to the bride going into labor. And done by a rabbi, because that's the only clerical person Leo Getz could find.
  • It's explicitly not a real wedding, just something she asked to be thrown together since she wanted to say the words before giving birth.
• The mid-battle marriage in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End skips rather a lot of the traditional ceremony and is frequently interrupted in very, very strange ways.

Barbossa: "Dearly beloved, we be gathered here today...to nail yer gizzards to the mast, ye poxy cur!"

• In The Princess Bride, Prince Humperdinck rushes his wedding to Buttercup because the good guys are Storming the Castle. Subverted later when Westley points out that she never said, "I do." (In the book he gives the significantly less satisfying observation, "Well, divorces happen all the time, don't they?")
  • He's correct either way, especially considering the marriage is never consummated, and thus can be annulled. In addition, the whole deal was made under duress, although if Humperdinck's plan had worked, there wouldn't have been anyone to contest the matter, least of all Buttercup, as he planned to kill her immediately afterwards to foment a war.
• Several of the Robin Hood films use this trope.
  • Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Particularly notable in that the Sheriff (who's evil and everything) won't "go all the way" with Marion until they are legally married. It even gets a bit of Lampshade Hanging: the whole way through the wedding, Mortianna is shouting to the Sheriff to just take her now, but he snarls back that, for once in his life, he wants to have something good and pure. Never mind that he's marrying Marian against her will. Of course, he also needs a legitimate child to put on the throne, and while a matter of minutes wouldn't make much difference, one way or the other he has to succeed in marrying her; so it's just as well to do it in that order.
  • Subverted in Robin Hood: Men in Tights, because of the chastity belt the bride is wearing, though the Sheriff doesn't know about that until he actually does attempt to "deflower her in the tower" after Robin and company break up the wedding. Then it's played straight in the same film when Robin and Marion are so eager to get married that they get the nearest holy man (the Rabbi) to marry them very quickly (interrupted only by King Richard, who asks to kiss the bride as per tradition).
• Shrek: Fiona asks the vicar to cut straight to the "I do"s so that she can be kissed by Lord Farquaad before the sun sets and so break the spell on her.
• Spaceballs. Parodied (of course); they're skipping to the end because the minister is fed up with all the interruptions and wants the ceremony over with. The (current) principals don't mind all that much.

Minister: "Okay, that's it. I'm taking no more chances. We're doing the short, short version! Do you?"
Lone Starr: "Yes."
Minister: "Do you?"
Princess Vespa: "Yes."
Minister: "Good! You're married. Kiss her!"

Literature

• In Flood Tide, a Merovingen Nights anthology edited by CJ Cherryh, the short story "Marriage" by Lynn Abbey: The Kamat family is determined that Marina Kamat's marriage will take place before her baby's birth, no matter what. She goes into labor during the ceremony; the main tension is provided because one city dignitary hesitates to sign the paperwork under the circumstances, opening up the real possibility that concessions might be extorted from the Kamat family in the heat of the moment just to get things finished in time. The baby's birth is announced just after the contract is declared to be ratified.

Live Action TV

• During Boston Legal's third season, Brad and Denise were engaged, and Denise was also expecting at the time. On their wedding day, Denise went into labor before the ceremony could begin. They go to the hospital, where Brad (rather rudely) insists that they need to be married before the baby is born, so he won't be illegitimate. This is played for laughs, as the baby's birth is shown to be imminent throughout the episode. They do make it just in time, and then about three seconds later, the baby is born.
• John and Aeryn in Farscape combined this with Wedding Smashers.
• Joey does this twice in Friends. In Chandler and Monica's wedding, he skips ahead because he forgot his notes, and at Phoebe and Mike's wedding, which happens to be taking place outside in the snow, he speeds up due to the cold having spread to his "special place".
• Subverted on How I Met Your Mother as Barney speeds up during Marshall and Lily's wedding and they ask him to slow down and he barks out "I can't!" because he doesn't want anyone to know that he's crying.
• Malcolm in the Middle, episode "Ida's Boyfriend": Ida drugs a rich man in order to marry him. In the middle of the ceremony, he starts to come out of the drugs and Ida urges the minister to cut to the end.
• In one episode of Night Court, the judge was delivering a baby and marrying the parents at the same time. Said parents had decided (finally) that they wanted to be officially married before the baby's birth, leading to a race between the two events. The judge: "Inowpronounceyoumanandwifeit'saboy!"
  • A similar event happens at the end of The Drew Carey Show, where half of Drew and Kellie's baby is illegitimate because the preacher stopped to get a candy bar from the hospital vending machine.
• On Stacked, Jenny McCarthy guest stars as a Gold Digger, marrying a rich and senile old man, whose mental and physical state have both deteriorated to an extreme extent. The old man has a heart attack and dies halfway through the ceremony. Poor Jenny starts trying to rush the ceremony when she realizes her groom is dying, but he is declared dead before she could marry him and inherit his fortune.
• Occurred on the 9 September 2010 episode of The Young and The Restless, which featured the wedding of Billy Abbott and Victoria Newman. They've already skipped, at Billy's insistence, the Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace bit; a wise decision, given the large number of extended Newman and Abbott family members in attendance. Then the police break up the wedding and arrest Victoria; the minister (played by Elinor Donahue) runs down the aisle after them, quickly pronouncing them man and wife before the cops cart Victoria off.
• Grey's Anatomy: Teddy does this when she married Scott Foley and has to hurry off to work. He's a patient whom she just met and she's marrying him so he can use her health insurance. Not because she's insanely desperate or anything.
• Used implicitly in Doctor Who in the appropriately titled episode, "The Wedding of River Song". It was almost certainly rushed due to time itself dissolving, though it is also certainly possible, though not terribly likely, that a traditional Galifreyan ceremony is simply two sentences long.
  • "Implictly"? The Doctor specifically said "we're in the middle of a combat zone, so we'll have to do the quick version."

Music

• The Dixie Chicks song "White Trash Wedding": Say "I do" and kiss me quick, 'cause the baby's on its way.

Recorded and Stand-Up Comedy

• Rabbi Bob Alper tells about a sweltering outdoor summer wedding, where the bride asks him to make it short. The ceremony consisted of, "Do you both want to be married?" "Yes." "You are." See it here, starting about 2:15.

Theatre

• In The Most Happy Fella, Tony's wedding ceremony has to be done quickly and in private because of his serious injuries requiring urgent medical treatment. The big wedding party has to be postponed to a later date.

Western Animation

• This occurs in the Woody Woodpecker cartoon A Fine Feathered Frenzy. Woody spots an ad in the personals of a 'Gorgeous Gal' who is rich, has plenty of food and wants to marry a young man. When he calls her up she entices him with her sexy voice so he rushes over to marry her. Unfortunately when he meets her he sees that Gorgeous Gal is a white haired featherless crow that is much larger and older than he is. Gorgeous Gal falls in love with him but the Woodpecker is no longer interested. Eventually he enters a room where Gorgeous is wearing a wedding gown with a priest on hand ready to marry them. Woody runs clear across the country and swims to a small island. Soon he spots Gorgeous Gal's chubby arm sticking out of a golden submarine motioning for him to come hither. He tries to escape but she grabs him by the tail feathers and drags him into the watercraft. The very next second the priest comes out and hangs a 'Just Married' sign on the submarine. The actual wedding ceremony was over really fast for comedic effect.