Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life was released just a few short weeks ago, and it seems like the fandom has not remotely slowed down in regards to dissecting and debating the Netflix reboot. The four 90 minute episodes were a major payoff for the fans who had been watching the original series non stop since its 2007 cancellation. That being said, A Year in the Life was far from perfect, and certain moments baffled the fandom. Many of these WTF moment came from the finale episode, "Fall", which left some crazy cliffhangers in the air. In particular, many fans were displeased that we didn't get to see Lorelai and Luke's big Stars Hollow wedding.
Well, now it looks like we have an answer as to why it wasn't in the series. TV Line recently spoke to Daniel and Amy Sherman-Palladino about the limited series. Regarding the big wedding, Daniel revealed the following:
The wedding was originally a much bigger deal.The wedding was a whole shebang. And then they took money away from us. Anything that has extras in it and costumes became a production nightmare. So we had to figure out how to make this wedding satisfying without doing 'The Big Wedding'.
Aha. Things make much more sense now. The wedding every Gilmore Girls fan has been waiting for was originally going to be featured on A Year in the Life, but the business of show (as well as a decreased budget) got in the way.
News that budgetary concerns stopped such an important moment in the series will no doubt be surprising for many. Netflix seems to be on top of the TV world at the moment, and they presumably have all the money in the world from their programming. But every show has a different set of producers, and Gilmore Girls is certainly not an inexpensive series. The entire town of Stars Hollow needed to be rebuilt, and the large ensemble cast all needed to be paid. Perhaps the budget go a bit out of hand, which resulted in Lorelai's dream wedding not being shown. Bummer.
Budgeting for Netflix series seems to be a tricky thing, presumably because they don't have traditional advertisers. Commercials aren't on the streaming network, so properly allocating funds for the various series can be difficult. Similar situations have happened with one of Netflix's more popular shows, Orange is the New Black. Actress Taryn Manning revealed that the cast actually isn't paid all that well, partly because the entire prison of Litchfield is on the payroll. I'd imagine paying all the Stars Hollow actors presents a similar challenge.
Of course, we did get to see Luke and Lorelai get married after all, albeit in a smaller fashion. The night before the ceremony, Luke and Lorelai were married with Rory beside them. The couple each prepared extravagant surprises for each other, making for a magical moment in the town. And it was special because Luke and Lorelai aren't a traditional couple; their wedding represented this.
Although Emily is going to be pissed about that one. Yikes.
