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The Vivienne Westwood dress, the bird headpiece, the New York Public Library. The perfect Sex and the City wedding. Unfortunately, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) got stood up at the altar. But at the end of the series, it seemed Carrie had finally gotten her happily ever after with Mr. Big (Chris Noth). The two had seen so many ups and downs. But when Big flew to Paris and said, “Carrie, you’re the one,” viewers’ hearts melted. Still, in the Sex and the City movie, he panicked before their wedding and broke her heart again. In the end, the two finally wed without all the pomp and circumstance. 

The ‘Sex and the City’ wedding that didn’t happen

Sarah Jessica Parker is seen on the set of "And Just Like That..." season 2 on November 03, 2022
Sarah Jessica Parker | Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images

When Carrie and Big decide to get married, they plan a small wedding in the 2008 Sex and the City movie. She wants to wear a white vintage suit in her closet, but her friends disapprove. 

Then Carrie and Big’s intimate wedding blows up when she poses for a Vogue photo shoot. The bride gets caught up, and the small affair suddenly turns into an extravaganza with tons of publicity. Carrie sets her suit aside when Vivienne Westwood gifts her the stunning gown she modeled in Vogue.

For her wedding day, Bradshaw tops off her designer dress with a teal bird headpiece for her “something blue.” Carrie gets so caught up in the fancy wedding that she fails to notice Big’s mounting anxiety.

As he approaches the wedding venue, Big panics and can’t get out of his limo. When he finally turns around and reaches her, she’s furious at him for standing her up at the altar. Carries screams at him in the street, saying she’s humiliated and knew he would do this to her.

She later talks to her friends about what happened. “He couldn’t get out of the car. After 10 years of what he already put me through, he couldn’t make the effort and get out of the car,” she explained. “I made the effort. I put a bird on my head!”

“Is that what that was?” asks Miranda (Cynthia Nixon). “I thought it was feathers.”

Yes, Miranda, it was a bird.

Why did Carrie wear a bird on her head in the ‘Sex and the City’ movie?

“The bird story,” as Sarah Jessica Parker calls it, is almost a character all its own.

“This bird, I saw it and thought it was magnificent,” Parker explained to Vogue. “What was so crazy to me about this were the colors. The colors are, especially in person, like, you can’t tell.”

Parker and the Sex and the City wardrobe team found the bird and were so in love with it but didn’t think they could “sell it” to showrunner Michael Patrick King. So they decided not to discuss it with him in advance. She knew she was ambushing him.

“And when I came to the set, he was like, ‘Why is there a bird on your head?’ And I was like, ‘Look at the bird. You would’ve made the same decision.’” she recalled. “Of course, you know he argued against, and he wins a lot, for good reason … but we won.”

The bird was undoubtedly controversial, and people still talk about it all these years later.

Will the Vivienne Westwood dress return in ‘And Just Like That…’?

Related

‘Sex and the City’: Carrie’s Mexican Honeymoon Wasn’t Filmed in Mexico or Even a Resort

Season 2 of the Sex and the City spinoff And Just Like That… is filming in New York City, and fans get excited whenever they catch a glimpse of what’s new with their favorite fashionista and her friends. 

Recent photos of Carrie holding hands with her ex Aidan Shaw (John Corbett) have had fans talking about what’s to come on the Sex and the City reboot.

Another photo surfaced of Parker in the famous Vivienne Westwood gown during filming. This time, instead of donning the bird headpiece, she wore peacock-blue silk gloves (the actor’s favorite color, she told Vogue) and matching Manolo Blahnik heels.

The question now is, why is she wearing that dress again?

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