"The Wedding"

"The Wedding"
November 1, 1979
B

Paula A. Roth wrote this episode that doesn't have much of a plot but is nonetheless sweet and at times very funny.  Although we just had a "wedding episode" a few weeks earlier, this time the wedding is for real and for an actual canonical couple.  Frank proposes to Edna, a month after he booked the church, and a day after waking up the girls in the middle of the night to get Laverne's blessing.  Edna doesn't mind this when he does finally awkwardly propose, but she thinks it's a bad omen when a funeral bumps their wedding off the schedule.  She's had five postponements and five bad marriages.  Frank, who's having a bachelor party with the guys (either because he has no friends his own age or because would you wanna party with Uncle Fungi?), reassures her.

Laverne is great about everything.  Although she was initially thrown off by the ship (whatever she may tell Shirley in the flashback to when she and Carmine made out and she was happy to introduce Edna to her father), she is thrilled for Pop, and she accepts Edna into the family with a little speech that's so heartwarming that Edna almost cries.  Sentimental Shirley is of course also delighted, and the two girls do what they can to plan the wedding.  They even find another church for the wedding, a black church.

I braced myself for cringey humor, but it actually works, even Laverne and Shirley singing with the choir.  And of course Lenny cries at the wedding, because he's just as sentimental as Shirley.  So we're going to just ignore the bad omens and forget what we know about the future of Fredna's marriage.