[This story contains major spoilers from Wicked: For Good.]
In the middle of Wicked: For Good, there’s an opulent wedding scene with Glinda and Fiyero in a hall dripping with flowers, circular Ozian trees and a runway made of moving yellow butterflies.
This could be a centerpiece in any other film, but for director Jon M. Chu, who also helmed Crazy Rich Asians with one of the most over-the-top wedding scenes, this was par for the course. In fact, he grew up shooting weddings in high school.
“Wedding videos. Bar Mitzvah videos. You name it,” Chu said. “I cut my teeth in that. I know how to shoot it.”
His idea for the scene started with the butterflies, which he envisioned as a homage to the Yellow Brick Road in the film, the sequel to Wicked.
“I want a yellow brick road with yellow butterflies, and I want her to walk, and I want these butterflies to flutter up when she’s walking. I think it could be the most beautiful thing. And, yes, it did evoke a little bit of that ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ feel, but in real life, because in Oz, it’s all possible,” Chu said.
The scene was shot in the repurposed Hall of Grandiosity, which is where Glinda and Elphaba meet the Wizard in the first film. Production Designer Nathan Crowley transformed the space by bringing in nature and filling it with the trees that had been used for forest scenes. Set decorator Lee Sandales covered the windows in roses and brought in garden berms.
“Together, we had to make this place just joyous and not the hall of intimidation,” Crowley said.
Throughout the design process, Chu kept pushing the team to do more and more, at one point suggesting having an entire orchestra floating in the air. But due to budgetary and time constraints, and the fact that the wedding scene is intercut with another scene in the film, he had to scrap the biggest ideas.
“I think I brought our wedding design team in like six times, killing each of their designs being like, “This is Oz. Think crazier. Think weirder. Think bizarre. This is not a regular wedding,’ and they did it every time. And I was never really satisfied. And in the end, I think we went back to one of the most simple versions,” Chu said.
To match the scope of the large hall, designer Paul Tazewell gave Grande a 25-meter long veil, which he saw as reminiscent of Maria’s from The Sound of Music. The veil includes butterflies, which were individually cut out and sparkled, and continue onto the skirt and a crystalized butterfly tiara.
“All of it is operating as someone like Glinda, her idea of a perfect wedding. It speaks of Madame Morrible and the Wizard and orchestrating this as an image of good,” Tazewell said.
Still, he left the top half of her body fairly bare and chose an asymmetrical heart-shaped bodice in order to emphasize the character’s vulnerability, which carries over into the following scenes.
