Bridal inspiration from the movies

Sione's Wedding shows off Pacific style © 2005 South Pacific Pictures, photographer Kirsty Griffin

Want some active dress inspiration, rather than just looking at static pictures? Check out the video store or your mates' DVDs. There are lots of movies with a wedding theme that showcase dresses. They may not be about the dress but it still tends to end up being a star of the show. Fancy a beach wedding? Check out Mama Mia, which is set on a Greek island and showcases the sort of dress – dresses, actually – that is perfect for a hot beach side wedding. It's also worth a look if yours is a second-time wedding, as Meryl Streep shows you can look hot at any age.

Pacific look wedding

Still in hot weather territory, but our very own Pacific this time, there's Sione's Wedding. Not too many wedding dresses here, but lots of lovely Pacific styles to check out and different, low-key bridesmaids' dresses. It's also nice to see a Samoan wedding, and a church wedding to boot. Although lots of us aren't churchy, there are many for whom a church wedding is the only way to go.

Sex and the City, the movie, features some over-the-top dresses to salivate over, as Carrie prepares for her Big Day. And then there's a cute, modest little wedding suit and the divine shoes; plus what He thinks about it all. It's third time round for Big, you see. Well worth watching on a number of counts, and the Vogue dresses are to die for – even the ones you hate. Carrie is another older bride, if not as old as Meryl, but that doesn't stop her looking ravishing.

4 weddings

An oldie but goldie, Four weddings and a Funeral is a bit stuffy, but it features a Scots as well as several English weddings – with varying dresses to check out – and with our Scots heritage it's certainly worth seeing, particularly if you're after a classic look. We're still not sure about men in skirts, sorry, kilts, but, hey, there are big hunky chaps wearing Pacific-style man-skirts in Sione's Wedding so who are we to snigger? Probably time we updated our views. There's a Texan Stetson-wearing wedding too, which provides a bit of much needed relied from all the Englishness and dour weather.

Marriage and Jane Austen

We reckon any excuse to watch a Jane Austen or Jane-inspired movie is good. There's a bunch to choose from, from Pride and Prejudice to Sense and Sensibility to Emma and its very entertaining modern update Clueless, which is set in Beverly Hills and stars Alicia Silverstone and Brittany Murphy. Lots of empire-style dresses to drool over here, and, in Clueless, the wedding scene at the end where the girls, who are still in high school, describe their fantasy weddings is priceless. Their worried boyfriends look v. nervous. No doubt envisaging all the stress and cost.

There's also Mansfield Park, which, in its latest BBC version, stars former teen popster and Dr Who sidekick Billie Piper as the heroine, Fanny Price. Billie also models a wonderful frothy dress in a BBC adaptation of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. Co-star Sarah Parish, who plays an older Beatrice to Billie's character Hero, models a more elegant dress for her modest wedding at the end of the play, which has been changed quite a bit.

Last but not least, there's one of our favourites, My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It's great fun and a lesson in keeping the frou-frou until control, and in how to negotiate a those cross-cultural currents if you and your intended come from different cultures.

Any other films worth watching for wedding tips? Let us know. Great for enjoying the run-up to the Big Day before it all gets too hectic.