Behind the scenes at ‘Virgin River’ big wedding

How long into dating someone before you hear wedding bells? It’s an age-old question with varying opinions. On “Virgin River,” it took six seasons and 64 episodes. The Netflix romance drama capped its sixth season, now streaming, with the long-anticipated wedding of Mel Monroe and Jack Sheridan, the show’s central couple whose relationship unapologetically leans into its escapist fantasy rubric. And what better time for viewers to be reminded to celebrate love than in a festive haze of last-minute gift shopping and financial stress?

For a show in which time moves at a glacial pace — the first five seasons of the series take place within the span of about a year —the fictional couple, as played by Alexandra Breckenridge and Martin Henderson, managed to make it down the aisle despite enduring twists and turns that would have caused real-life couples to exchange some awkward breakup texts. Over the run of the show, they’ve have been kidnapped by illegal pot farmers; learned Jack was fathering twins by his ex — until it turned out to be a lie; Mel has been robbed at knife point, while Jack has been shot; later, once they finally get on the same page about having kids and are expecting, they’re dealt a blow when Mel suffers a miscarriage.

They had the “for better, for worse” part of their commitment locked down, to say the least. “My reaction was, ‘good, about time!’ “ Henderson said in a recent video call. “I feel like the audience has wanted this moment for so long. Look, it’s a romance novel. So aside from hot, steamy sex, what does an audience want? They want everlasting love, marriage and family and all of the happy ending. I think we walked a good balance of dragging that out long enough and teasing the audience long enough.”

“It’s the moment people have been waiting for since they started watching it,” Breckenridge said. Based on the bestselling book series by Robin Carr, the drama is set in a charming small town in Northern California and revolves around the courtship between a nurse, who after the death of her husband, leaves behind her life in LA to start a new chapter, and a veteran who owns the town’s popular bar. For showrunner and executive producer Patrick Sean Smith, who started his career in the young adult space on shows like “Summerland” and “Greek,” showing that a second chance at love at a different stage in life is possible has been a gratifying experience.

“Those stories are so much richer than just the purity of the first love,” he said. “There’s more nuance in it.”

Mel and Jack get married early in the second book with less fanfare than what plays out on the screen. In the show, their meddling but well-intentioned friend Hope McCrea (Annette O’Toole), who is the town’s mayor, persuades the couple into letting her plan the event — it’s a means for the show’s writers to throw a slightly more elaborate affair than a simple one fitting of the pair’s style. There are ice sculptures at this rustic wedding.

“I felt like if I had stayed true to the book with Mel and Jack getting married in his parents’ backyard in Sacramento, I would have to make sure my home was unlisted because they (fans) would have come for me and my family,” Smith said. “It felt reasonable to deviate. I had the pleasure of talking to Robin Carr and letting her know what was happening, and she was just so excited that we were going to make it a big event. It just felt like to go six seasons and build to this epic milestone for this couple, that had to be big.”The show’s creative team felt the pressure of fan expectations. Smith said the show’s set decorator Mecca Thornhill put it this way: “Everybody has in their mind a different version of what Mel and Jack’s wedding should look like.”

“We wanted it to be Pinterest-able,” Smith said. “We knew we wanted a cozy vibe. We wanted a farm vibe. We knew we wanted something in nature, which given the time period in which we were shooting in Vancouver, it was dicey. And we just got lucky. It was a beautiful day. I told everybody I prayed to Taylor Swift and that’s what happens when you pray to Taylor. She makes it happen.”

Tribune News Service