Summary

• Lana and Will reunite at Emma's wedding after misunderstandings from their past cause tension.
• Lana's daughter's lavish wedding triggers conflict, highlighting Lana's concerns over happiness vs. appearances.
• The romcom unfolds with classic miscommunications, leading to a heartwarming proposal and a happy ending.

Netflix has brought back the wedding weekend romcom with Mother of the Bride, but does everyone get their happily ever after in the end? The 2024 romantic comedy follows Dr. Lana Winslow (Brooke Shields), whose daughter Emma (Miranda Cosgrove) announces that she is getting married in the coming weeks in Thailand. Emma never even told Lana she was dating someone, so the news came as a shock. However, this is nothing compared to the bombshell news that Emma's fiance's father is the college boyfriend who broke her heart.

RJ (Sean Teale) and his father, Will (Benjamin Bratt), are a lot alike, which leads Lana to grow concerned that Emma's fiance will disappear the way that Will had back in the day. However, things slowly begin to melt between Will and Lana as they hang out with their other college buddies and remember what it had been like to be young and in love—this time in Thailand. Just as it seems they may be able to get things started again, however, Lana discovers that Will has been hiding a secret, which, in her mind, confirms that he hasn't changed a bit by the events of Mother of the Bride.

Do Lana & Will Get Back Together In Mother Of The Bride?

Lana & Will Are College Sweethearts Who Get A Second Chance Decades Later

The story in Mother of the Bride centers around Emma and RJ's wedding, which is a massive, public event thanks to Emma's Instagram following. The scale of the wedding causes Lana significant concern since she feels that Emma is putting aside her own desires to meet the expectations of various financial partners and sponsors. As the tension grows around the wedding, Lana and Will's relationship seems to fall even more into place. However, around the time that Emma realizes that she needs to focus on her own happiness rather than her sponsors, things hit the fan for Will and Lana.

Though Will slowly proves to Lana that he has changed since he ghosted her backing college, the titular Mother of the Bride is more eager than she realizes to prove him wrong. This means that Lana is quick to judge when she hears Will on the phone with a woman named Katrina, telling her he "can't live without" her. Of course, this was all just a common and classic big misunderstanding trope. Will confronts Lana about her sudden coldness toward him at Mother of the Bride's big wedding and ultimately reveals that his only secret is a plan to propose. Lana accepts the proposal, and the two finally get their happily ever after.

Mother of the Bride is available to stream on Netflix.

Who Was Katrina & What Was Will Hiding?

Lana Overheard Will Talking To Katrina And Assumed The Worst

When Lana hears Will's phone conversation with Katrina, she assumes that he is speaking with a lover. This leads her to give her old boyfriend the cold shoulder, determined to simply get through the wedding and then never see or talk to him again. However, Will calls her out on this during the bouquet toss when she goes to great lengths to avoid catching it herself. He stops everything and forces Lana to do something they rarely did when they were in college: they have a real conversation.

When Lana says that she heard Will talking to a woman named Katrina on the phone, the woman herself steps from the crowd. As it turns out, Katrina is only his personal assistant, and he had been saying, "I can't live without you," because she was threatening to quit since he was asking her to fly out to Thailand. Will needed Katrina there because he wanted her to bring an engagement ring—the one he had bought for Lana back in college—to the wedding so he could propose. Once this classic rom-com misunderstanding is out of the way, Lana joyfully accepts the proposal.

Lana & Will's College Breakup Explained

Lana & Will's Relationship Fell Apart After College

At the beginning of the Netflix romantic comedy movie, Lana reveals that she had been head over heels in love with Will in college but that he up and disappeared without a word to explain himself. It isn't until the days leading up to the wedding in Mother of the Bride that she learns why—but it still wasn't a great reason. It turns out that Will, who was confused about his future while Lana was so self-assured, had felt unworthy of his girlfriend. So, he skipped town in an effort to figure out who he was and what he wanted and quickly regretted it.

Will confesses that he went much further than trying to call; he had looked up where she worked and showed up at the lab, only to discover that she was away on her honeymoon.

Lana had been so devastated and heartbroken by Will's disappearance that she changed her number and fell off the map herself. So, even once Will decided he had been a jerk and tried to fix things, he couldn't find her. During the scene at Lover's Cove in Mother of the Bride, Will confesses that he went much further than trying to call; he had looked up where she worked and showed up at the lab, only to discover that she was away on her honeymoon. So, Will moved on with his life and married a woman he didn't really love, remembering Lana as the one who got away until his son's wedding.

What Happened To Emma's Father Before Mother Of The Bride?

Will Assumed That Lana & Her Husband Lived Happily Ever After

Will thought Lana was gone forever since she had gotten married and had a child (Emma). However, at the wedding in Mother of the Bride, he learns that Lana's husband had died in a car accident when Emma was only eight. Lana explains later that she had known when her husband died that she would be able to handle it since she had already lost someone she loved before. Still, Emma's father was mentioned several times throughout the Netflix movie, as both the bride and her mother lamented that he couldn't be there for the wedding.

To Will, the news that Lana's husband had passed away so long ago is especially tragic since he had only stopped trying to contact her because he believed she was happily married. Once he knows that this isn't true, he calls up his assistant Katrina and asks her to bring his old engagement ring, knowing that Lana is the love of his life and that he won't let her slip through his fingers again. Luckily for Will, these feelings are mutual, and once Lana is confident that her old love won't hurt her again, she's all too happy to accept his proposal. So, the titular Mother of the Bride becomes the bride herself.