Why We Didn’t Get a Kanthony Wedding Scene

There was a wedding this season, but not the wedding of the main couple. Understandably, this upset some fans as we saw Edwina walk down the aisle, but not Kate. I can absolutely get why people feel shortchanged in this, but I’m going to argue that it was actually thematically a strong choice to leave that out.

The Lady Whistledown voice over is the plot device that always tells us the larger point, how all the stories are connecting. In the case of the wedding that we did see, the Whistledown is all about, unsurprisingly, the pressures of society and what is expected. Moreover, when it really comes down to the titular “choice,” the voice over is all about how marriage is exclusively the purview of humanity. It’s about how the pressures, the demands, are not what matters. Instead, it’s having faith in the other person, about keeping that faith.

Those themes were absolutely explored by their opposites during the wedding. It’s all about the trappings, the pressures, and Anthony envisioning another woman coming toward him as his bride as he stands on the altar is just about as faithless as it gets. But I think we see, in that same sequence, how connected Anthony and Kate are as long as they don’t have societal pressures. When Anthony looks out to the pews, there is no one there. It is asking him, who would you stand beside if there was no one else to please? After a realization like that, a wedding with them would not add much thematically, even if it might be nice to see.

However, showing a wedding between them could actually detract from the theme of leaving duty behind to do what’s right for them. It’s why the proposal without the ring is the one that is more powerful. It’s the one where the demands of society don’t matter, where it’s just the truth between two people with nothing pulling them apart. They’ve left all of society behind and what they do is only for them.

We could still have gotten a wedding, something small and intimate at Aubrey Hall, which in my own head is absolutely how it happened, but I think the message that might have sent was too much competition between the sisters. Edwina is already fighting the presupposition that she’s shallow, flighty, selfish, and less deserving simply because she expresses the traditional qualities of a young woman. That’s not to say she’s perfect, but the show was always going to be fighting an uphill battle for the audience not to demonize her, and showing another wedding might feel a bit too much like competition in a season that was already teetering on the edge of that at a few points.

In the end, I never would have traded what we got for what we didn’t. The view of them six months later after a very long, clearly wonderful honeymoon, still adoring, still committed, and starting to live their lives as Viscount and Viscountess. Getting to see that competitive spirit still alive in them, the sheer joy they take in each other’s presence, was everything.

Perhaps we could have seen a wedding, but with the themes laid out, and the perfect ending we recieved, I think it was just right as it was.