"Our marriage, their wedding."  It's lesson number one for any newly engaged couple, Lucia (America Ferrera) and Marcus (Lance Gross) are no exception.  In Fox Searchlight Pictures' OUR FAMILY WEDDING, they learn the hard way that the path to saying "I do" can be rife with familial strife.   When they return from college and too suddenly announce their marriage plans, they soon discover that their fathers - two highly competitive over-the-top egos - can wreak a major amount of havoc on their special day. 
With insults flying and tempers running high, it's anyone's guess if the alpha dads (Forest Whitaker and Carlos Mencia) will survive to make it down the aisle in one piece.  Lucia's mother (Diana Maria Riva) is busy planning the wedding of "her" dreams and the only levelheaded one in the bunch is Angela (Regina King), the groom's father's best friend and lawyer, who manages to keep her cool when the madness reaches a crescendo. 
With only weeks to plan their wedding, Lucia and Marcus soon discover the true meaning of love and find there is truth to the saying - that when you marry someone, you marry their entire family.
OUR FAMILY WEDDING is directed by Rick Famuyiwa from an original screenplay by Wayne Conley and Malcolm Spellman and Rick Famuyiwa with story by Wayne Conley. 

A MULTI-TALENTED ENSEMBLE CAST BRINGS OUR FAMILY WEDDING TO LIFE
Director Rick Famuyiwa has a genuine affinity for weddings. "What's beautiful about them in general is that you're surrounded by people who are strangers, and then after 'I do,' they're family."
In fact, it's his personal philosophy on love and marriage that has brought the Sundance Film Festival winner back to the altar for a second go around.  "Nothing is more important to me than family, especially my wife and children," he says, "and nothing I do supersedes that."  Famuyiwa's debut feature film, THE WOOD, delivered a comedic male perspective on marriage through the eyes of four best friends.  In OUR FAMILY WEDDING, he takes a lighthearted look at love through the eyes of two incredibly divergent families who are thrown together when a young couple unexpectedly decides to get married.   No one is ready for the drama that awaits them!
"Weddings are full of life energy," says producer Edward Saxon.  "They often bring generations together and are inherently dramatic because two people are about to make a big life change."
Producer Steven J. Wolfe agrees. "Every wedding takes on a life of its own," he says.  "This one centers around two kids who are very much in love and bring their families together only to discover that their father's hate each other!  So ultimately, this is a movie about two polarized families trying to figure out a way to mesh."   Read more

CRAFTING THE WARDROBE FOR THE CAST OF OUR FAMILY WEDDING
Dressing a cast as diverse as the one featured in OUR FAMILY WEDDING became an enriching creative endeavor for veteran designer Hope Hanafin.  Her on screen task involved differentiating all of the varying cultures and social backgrounds of the characters from a visual standpoint.  For Forest Whitaker's fastidious playboy, "Brad Boyd," she chose two different looks.  "He's very meticulous and defines himself with mid-century sparseness and clean lines," Hanafin explains.  Choosing the look of the Brat Pack as her inspiration, she crafted Whitaker's on-screen look with a mix of sports clothes and sleek, classic, structured suits.  Read more

FILMMAKERS CRAFT REALISTIC SETS FOR OUR FAMILY WEDDING
Principal photography on OUR FAMILY WEDDING took place for six weeks on location in and around Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. 
The first day of filming was at the Monique Lhuillier bridal boutique on Melrose Avenue where Lucia, her mother and sister attend a bridal party fitting.  The logistics of shooting in that venue became daunting for the 100 plus cast and crew-members who faced the ongoing challenge of loading equipment into the compact space and completing filming in just one day.  But they did it.  Read more

About The Filmmakers

RICK FAMUYIWA (Director/Screenwriter) made his feature debut as writer/director on Paramount Pictures' romantic comedy THE WOOD.  The sleeper hit starring Taye Diggs, Omar Epps, and Richard T. Jones grew out of Famuyiwa's original screenplay which was originally developed and workshopped at Robert Redford's Sundance Film Institute. Next Famuyiwa directed and co-wrote the popular film, BROWN SUGAR, starring Taye Diggs, Sanaa Lathan, and Queen Latifah.   Then in 2007, Famuyiwa received critical praise for his screenplay to the critically lauded film TALK TO ME starring Academy-Award nominee Don Cheadle.
A graduate of the University of Southern California, Famuyiwa double-majored in Cinema/Television Production and Critical Studies.  During his senior year at USC, he wrote and directed a thesis film, BLACKTOP LINGO.  The short brought him acclaim and industry attention, and was one of 29 films selected (out of 1,500 submissions) to screen at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival, making Famuyiwa the first undergraduate from USC to have a film shown at the Festival.

WAYNE CONLEY (Screenplay and Story by), born in New York and raised in Harlem and New Jersey, first discovered his flair with words taking Creative Writing courses in junior high and high school. At the urging of his teachers, he continued to pursue his love for the written word while attending college at the University of Maryland College Park, where he majored in English and continued to hone his skills.
After leaving Maryland, Wayne was off to Hollywood - with stars in his eyes and a few hundred dollars in his pocket - to pursue a career as a television writer. His first break came in 1998, when he was hired to write on Nickelodeon's "Kenan and Kel." Since then, he has amassed TV writing and producing credits on shows such as "All That," "The Nick Cannon Show" and "Taina" with a feature resume that includes New Line Cinema's KING'S RANSOM.

MALCOLM SPELLMAN (Screenplay by) grew up in the culturally diverse East Bay Area of San Francisco and prides himself on a true grasp of the term "multi-culti."  Raised in Berkeley, he moved to Los Angeles where he worked as a script reader and video-game tester until selling his first spec script to Fox 2000 in 2000. 
Malcolm has worked on a wide array of movies for Fox Entertainment, from an animated musical feature in development with Jamie Foxx to gritty dramas to the comedy OUR FAMILY WEDDING.  He is also developing SOUL TRAIN with Warner Brothers and an animated pilot with Cartoon Network.
In 2009, Malcolm made the Blacklist for BALLS OUT, a comedy he wrote with Tim Talbott under the pseudonym "TheRobotard8000.com."  Malcolm is a self taught screenwriter with no college background.  He currently resides in Los Angeles.

THE ART OF ORIGINAL FILMMAKING

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