The Groomsmen: First Look

The film begins with a frame story where a bride named Elizabeth hides in a bar from her groomsmen, telling her story to a bartender. The narrative shifts to Pete McGuire, a risk-averse pediatrician, meeting Chelsea Markham at his friend Hannah's wedding. Pete helps Chelsea with her maid-of-honor speech, and they share an immediate connection. However, Chelsea reveals she lives and works in Varna, Bulgaria. Pete's best friends, Danny and Jackson, convince him to break his 'organized' nature and chase her to the airport. They exchange information and begin a long-distance romance, governed by the '88-minute rule' for texting to avoid appearing desperate. Their first video date is ruined by an internet outage, leading to a brief misunderstanding, but they reconcile. When Chelsea has a layover in Philadelphia, they go on a 'real' date that starts at a stuffy restaurant but ends happily at a local cheesesteak shop. Chelsea nearly ends things due to the distance, but Pete's breathless declaration of love at the airport convinces her to stay committed. Pete later travels to Bulgaria to surprise her, but he is arrested after breaching airport security to retrieve his engagement ring from a luggage carousel. Chelsea bails him out, and he proposes in front of the police. The wedding planning becomes a clash of personalities between Chelsea's high-society parents and Pete's eccentric, New Age mother, Georgia, who insists on officiating. During a bachelor camping trip, the groomsmen get lost, survive a spider 'attack,' and confront their own emotional stagnation. A massive storm hits on the wedding day, canceling flights and ruining the original plans. Ultimately, the couple realizes that love doesn't follow a schedule, and they marry in an intimate ceremony officiated by Georgia, who invokes the 'sun and the sky.'