Review: A New York Christmas Wedding

Nia Fairweather and Adriana DeMeo in A New York Christmas Wedding

A New York Christmas Wedding is the kind of holiday romance you will never find on Hallmark or Lifetime channels. But you can see it on Netflix!

Cooper Koch in A New York Christmas Wedding
Girl, I’m your guardian angel.

A New York Christmas Wedding reminded me of A Christmas Carol. Instead of ghosts appearing to help someone make sense of life, we get a guardian angel – a gay guardian angel (Cooper Koch). The magical aspects of setting a life to rights are the same, however.

There are a lot of things wrong with this movie. Before I mention them, I want to tell you what’s right about it.

A New York Christmas Wedding is an LGBTQ story. This film managed to beat Happiest Season to the punch by a few weeks. People have been waiting since forever for an LGBTQ holiday romance. In the long run, I expect Happiest Season will prove to be the better film, but I haven’t seen it yet. Even so, having two such new films this holiday season is historic.

This holiday movie shows a lesbian wedding, officiated over by a priest (Chris Noth), and filmed in a real New York Catholic Church. (Chris Noth was the film’s producer.) Even the priest declares that love is love. The cast is inclusive in a number of ways. That is a big plus.

For those reasons, the film is ground breaking and worth a look.

Here’s the basic story outline. Young Jennifer (Camilla Harden) and young Gabrielle (Natasha Goodman) are high school girls. They are in love but haven’t admitted it. Jennifer is ready to declare herself over cookies and eggnog when they have a fight and break up.

Nia Fairweather in A New York Christmas Wedding
Is this real?

Skip ahead 20 years. Adult Jennifer (Nia Fairweather) is about to marry David (Otoja Abit – Abit also wrote and directed the film). David’s mother (Tyra Ferrell) is driving Jennifer crazy, so she bolts from a dinner party and goes for a run. There she meets her guardian angel.

Adriana DeMeo in A New York Christmas Wedding
We have a appointment with the priest, so get moving.

The angel is convinced Jennifer is unhappy, so he sends her to an alternate reality where she lives with her first love, now adult Gabrielle (Adriana DeMeo). They are about to get married.

Jennifer is aware of both realities, so she has a hard time getting into the situation with Gabrielle. The angel flits her around between various versions of reality until Jennifer finally makes up her mind what she wants out of life and how she should express her true self.

Now let’s talk about the movie’s failings. It was slapped together in two weeks on a very low budget. The acting wasn’t the best – it felt like a little rehearsal time or a few more takes would have helped the players seem more natural. Even the parts of it that were supposed to be reality were illogical and not well written. Gaps and holes made for inexplicable missing plot bits and missing character development.

The filmmakers wanted to create a Christmas wedding in NYC with diverse LGBTQ characters and they accomplished that. They just didn’t accomplish it with polished writing and acting.

My recommendation is it’s worth a watch, even though it is far from perfect, because it is the kind of holiday love story that has been needed for a long time.

A New York Christmas Wedding poster

Are you going to give this one a look? Or have you seen it already?

5 thoughts on “Review: A New York Christmas Wedding”

  1. Pingback: Review: Happiest Season - Old Ain't Dead

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