Jingle Bell Bride


 

Jingle Bell Bride (2020) - Hallmark

Jessica (Julie Gonzalo) is a hard driven, super ambitious wedding planner, the kind of person who is nice but gives her family gift cards for the holidays.  She's that chick.  At this time Jessica is coordinating the blowout, extreme, crazy extravagant wedding for the super spoiled popstar Rene (Donna Benedicto).  Just so you know, at the end of this movie we will attend this wedding and it looked like the only planning it needed was finding a church, but you know, budget.  One thing Rene wants is this really rare flower called the Jingle Bell flower, because her parents had this same flower at their wedding, and she wants it bad.  Problem is it really doesn’t exist anywhere at this time of year.  Julie tells her boss about this problem, but her boss doesn’t give a flying fig about reality and tells her to make it happen, or she won’t get that promotion to the London branch of Wedding Planning. 

Being the resourceful type, Julie finds there is a nursery that grows this flower somewhere in remote Alaska so it’s off from NYC to Small Town Alaska via a Puddle Jumper to secure this rare flower.  This is where she meets the dashingly handsome cat that runs this nursery, Matt (Ronnie Rowe Jr.).  Oh wait!  Matt!  That’s the dude that plays the dude that’s always on the bridge of Star Trek Discovery!  I love that dude!  Three seasons in and he hasn’t gotten killed off yet.  I mean his character is totally dead in the mirror verse… spoiler alert… but he’s alive in the regular verse.  Good for him! 

Lost focus for minute… what we were talking about?  Yeah, Matt.  So Matt and Jessica don’t hate each other upon their first meeting, but the sparks aren’t flying yet, mainly because Jessica is really locked in on this wedding, and Matt is really locked in on getting things ready for the towns Jingle Bell festival or something.  Besides, Jessica has to shoot back to NYC the next morning, flowers in tow, to continue planning the wedding.  Unless, of course, something happens which forces her to stay around a few days.  What are the chances of this happening?  100% chance baby!!!

Now Jessica and Matt are forced to spend a lot of time together, mainly because Jessica is staying at Matt’s house.  No hotels in Small Town Alaska.  And they talk, learn about each other, watch Aurora Borealis’s and stuff, make snow angles, build snowmen, Jessica uses her supreme planning skills to smooth over bumps in the road during the Jingle Bell festival prep, and Matt… well… basically stands around and looks dashingly handsome.  It looks like these two good looking kids should just go ahead close this deal, but Jessica has her wedding planning career in NYC and as such has no time for love, and Matt’s heart is still n tatters from a previous situation. 

Then of course something happens which brings upon an argument between these new found close friends and drives a rift between them, but it’s a really short rift because Matt quickly uses his handsome skills to make all that right once again.  No romance though, because Jessica is back in NYC to bring off that wedding and Matt is sticking around small town Alaska.  And that’s the way it would’ve ended if wise Aunt Rebecca (BJ Harrison) didn’t tell her silly nephew to shake off that hurt, head to New York City and go get his woman.  Which he does.  At Christmas.

So in these TV romance movies we watch, our couples have anywhere from three days to two weeks to meet, fall in love, break up and fall in love again.  This is a standard.  Unless they knew each other before the movie started which is relatively rare.   Jessica and Matt pulled it off in about five days, but I must say it was a believable five days, in as far as true love can be found in five days in TV World.  Started off as strictly business, then became friendly, then became super friendly, and then ‘uncomfortable I think I love you’ friendly.  And I believed it.  As I have said before, the main thing making these movies sink or swim, as they stick to a very rigid and unshakable formula, is a believable relationship between the two leads, and to that end Jessica Gonzalo and Ronnie Rowe Jr. managed to make a semi-believer out of me.  Also in so many of these movies, our heroines usually give up whatever hard fought career they were working towards to be with their man, at Christmas, which I've always thought was a B.S message if there was one, but kudos to Jingle Bell Bride.  Yes, Jessica turned down the London Wedding Planning promotion, who knew that was even a thing, but she did to be with her family, not be with the man.  He's the one that relocated to be with her.  I'm comfortable with that.

All of the other stuff we expect to see in these movies was here in abundance such as a LOT of snow, Christmas tree shopping and decorating, cookie baking, plenty of canned Christmas music, some caroling and a weird Christmas banjo band, hot cocoa drinking and even some eggnog dipping which we don’t see nearly enough of in these movies.  Aunt Rebecca was there to dispense the old person knowledge and had we two cute kids with pinchable cheeks to look at, and to check the last box Jessica’s bestie was a Person of Color.  Yes, it was her Latina sister, which also makes Jessica, who is also Latina, a Person of Color?  Maybe?  Probably not.  Doesn’t matter because the only color in Hallmarky world is the Color of Love.

And that right there is why The Jingle Bell Bride is a very vomit worthy addition to the never ending library of Hallmarky Romantic Holiday movies.

 

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