Ranking the ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Weddings by Drama Level (PHOTOS)
Meredith Grey and Derek Shepherd
Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) and Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) had already gotten hitched via Post-it note two seasons prior, and that’s the only MerDer wedding we recognize.
This Season 7 courthouse affair, meanwhile, was just a formality so that adoption officers with no sense of romance would let them take Zola home.
Callie Torres and George O’Malley
We nearly forgot about this Season 3 elopement — mostly because we never actually saw Callie (Sara Ramirez) and George (T.R. Knight) exchange vows — but we’ll rank their wedding as ever-so-slightly dramatic only because Callie becomes Callie O’Malley.
Teddy Altman and Henry Burton
Teddy (Kim Raver) and Henry’s (Scott Foley) romance would eventually become one of the great Grey’s love stories, but at this point in Season 7, they were still doctor and patient, with Teddy marrying Henry to get him onto her health insurance. Insurance fraud ratchets these nuptials up a few places on this list.
Catherine Avery and Richard Webber
Catherine (Debbie Allen) and Richard’s (James Pickens Jr.) Season 11 wedding in the hospital chapel is only dramatic because Catherine had taken off her engagement ring just hours beforehand as she and her groom argued about the Chief of Surgery selection process.
Oh, and also because Jackson (Jesse Williams) had just given April (Sarah Drew) an ultimatum about their marriage.
Cristina Yang and Owen Hunt
Cristina’s (Sandra Oh) second wedding, another Season 7 ceremony, was far less dramatic than her first. But one still gets the sense that she and Owen (Kevin McKidd) entering holy matrimony way too soon after the hospital shooting shown just one episode prior.
Callie Torres and Arizona Robbins
Yet another Season 7 wedding! And this one boasts Bailey (Chandra Wilson) as an officiant, a decision that alone would make Calzona our favorite Grey’s couple.
But Mama Torres brings the drama to the big day, telling Callie that a same-sex wedding is not a wedding and that it’s “devastating to love a child and to know you won’t see that child in heaven.” (Um, hello, love wins!)
April Kepner and Jackson Avery
After April’s spectacular Runaway Bride moment — more on that later — she and Jackson immediately elope in Lake Tahoe, as we see via flashback in Season 12. Never mind the Kepner family, not including Catherine Avery in the Japril wedding was a grave mistake on Japril’s part.
Miranda Bailey and Ben Warren
Bailey made it official with anesthesiologist/surgeon/firefighter/who-knows-what-else Ben (Jason George) in Season 9, but she rushes back to the hospital in her wedding gown when Richard’s then-wife, Adele (Loretta Devine), suffers an aneurysm.
Hours later, the wedding goes off without a hitch, but then Richard shows up and tells Mer that Adele suffered a fatal heart attack after the surgery.
Then, as the Grey’s writers twist the knife in our hearts, Richard tearfully flashes back to his and Adele’s own wedding day.
Amelia Shepherd and Owen Hunt
Amelia (Caterina Scorsone) realizes on her Season 12 wedding day that none of her family is coming, and she flees the church after overhearing Mer talking about Cristina being the love of Owen’s life.
But Mer and Maggie (Kelly McCreary) give their sister-in-law a pep talk over slushies at a convenience store, with Mer telling the bride it’s perfectly possible to have two great loves… right before Mer realizes she’s in another love triangle, this time with Maggie and Nathan (Martin Henderson).
Izzie Stevens and Alex Karev
The wedding you plan… may be your own. Between cancer treatments in Season 5, Izzie (Katherine Heigl) curates a fairy-tale wedding for Meredith and Derek, only for them to gift the whole shebang to her and Alex (Justin Chambers) in a stunning reversal of their usual self-absorption.
Izzie barely makes it down the aisle, so BFF-turned-lover-turned-BFF George offers her his arm. All the feels!
Jo Wilson and Alex Karev
Alex’s Season 14 wedding is even more dramatic thanks to a series of unfortunate events, including him and Jo (Camilla Luddington) getting locked in a garden shed with the desiccated corpse of a groundskeeper, their wedding coordinator going into anaphylactic shock in the aisle, and DeLuca (Giacomo Gianniotti) impulsively kissing Meredith… which we thought, at the time, was a one-time thing.
Never mind all that, though, because Jolex finally wed atop a ferryboat in the middle of Puget Sound with Mer officiating!
April Kepner and Matthew Taylor
This wedding provided one helluva mid-season cliffhanger for Season 10. Jackson waited until the middle of April’s wedding to Paramedic Matthew (Justin Bruening) to declare his love for her. And Stephanie (Jerrika Hinton), his girlfriend at the time, was right there! And April actually left Matthew at the altar!
Miraculously, Matthew eventually took April back and the two got hitched in a much less dramatic (albeit impromptu) Season 14 wedding.
Cristina Yang and Preston Burke
Back in Season 3, way before Burke (Isaiah Washington) handed Cristina the keys to his Swiss cardio chalet, they came this close to saying their I do’s.
But at the church, Burke calls off the wedding when he realizes that she’s giving up too much for him — her eyebrows included. Cut to: Meredith cutting a hyperventilating Cristina out of her wedding dress.
You don’t get to 15 seasons of a primetime soap without a few weddings, but Grey’s Anatomy has racked up more than a dozen by this point.
In fact, with all the formal and informal nuptials listed below, we fans of the ABC drama are getting about one wedding per season, on average.
Here are all those ceremonies, ranked by the relative level of interpersonal tension and emotional chaos.
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