“When you work with JLo, you don’t do that”: Shotgun Wedding Costume Designer Was Forced To Be Extra Careful With Jennifer Lopez’s Dress So That She Looks Glamorous Enough
Jennifer Lopez the gorgeous lady and rom-com sweetheart of Hollywood has extravagant fashion choices, not just in real life but even in reels. In her recent movie Shotgun Wedding Lopez playing the blushing bride is dragged into action after her destination wedding gets hijacked. Filled with action, the rom-com is a big break in Jennifer Lopez’s career. Being a character of her own, the celebrity was reported to have a specific choice for her outfit, which made her look glamorous amid the entire action sequence.
This time Jennifer Lopez wears a wedding gown rather than an action suit, which makes it a bit difficult for the costume designer Mitchell Travers to find the perfect fit. Although wedding gowns are usually gorgeous, the real challenge came up when the outfit was drenched in sweat, blood, and dirt. Finding the perfect wedding dress with an appropriate color that enhances the actor’s glam was a real challenge.
The origin story of the perfect wedding dress for Jennifer Lopez in Shotgun Wedding
A major portion of the movie Shotgun Wedding required Jennifer Lopez to wear a wedding gown, thus it was a real challenge for the costume designer Mitchell Travers to find the perfect gown that enhances the actor’s beauty. But we know how difficult it can get to wear such a heavy gown, instead of an action outfit and shoot fight scenes. Thus, Travers was also responsible for delivering a wedding gown that was not only perfect in its appearance but also when it’s worn during fight scenes.
In the movie, Lopez’s character Darcy was supposed to wear her future mother-in-law’s wedding gown for her own wedding. Now, in real life, vintage wedding dresses usually age and get a yellowish tone, which one cannot afford to portray in a movie, especially when Lopez is determined to have the perfect attire.
Travers shared in an interview with Variety “I started looking at what happens to them over time. What a 20-year-old dress would look like, a 40-year-old dress and they have this lovely patina that starts to happen and they yellow with age. When you work with JLo, we don’t do that,” Finding the perfect color seemed really difficult for the costume designer, until they decided to go with the color ‘warm blush‘.
Jennifer Lopez’s wedding gown had a character of its own in Shotgun Wedding
Shotgun Wedding has the plot set on an idyllic Filipino island, where Darcy (Jennifer Lopez) and Tom (Josh Duhamel) are to get married until their big day is hijacked and their guests turn into hostages. The rom-com movie then turns into a full-on action sequence with physical fights and explosions.
Coming back to the wedding dress, we can totally understand how things are supposed to turn out. Mitchell Travers explains the dress worn by Jennifer Lopez goes through “as much as the bride”. It was required of the dress “to be reflective of how she’s changing and what she’s learning”. Thus, for the sake of perfection, seven different versions of the dress were selected by the costume designer to represent the different phases of construction and destruction that it was going through.
Coming to the flexibility of the dress which is required for the action scenes, the designer used “20-30 layers of stretch net”. Travers explained, “It gives her the ability to bend her body and move her arms and legs”. By the end of the movie, Lopez transforms herself into a full-blown action character, that is where “she’s lost her sleeves, she’s covered in blood”. Mitchell Travers’ perfection in costume design not only kept Lopez comfortable with mobility but also brought out her glamour despite the action scenes.
Phew! But running and fighting in a wedding gown. No, thanks. Only Jennifer Lopez seems to be able to pull that off. Lopez’s character Darcy, in Shotgun Wedding, at least had a great wedding gown if not a peaceful wedding.
Source: Variety
