The Royal Wedding was the talk of the world last weekend. Either you were all wrapped up in Prince Harry, Meghan Markle & all the drama surrounding them, or you couldn’t care less & kept complaining about people talking about them. Once upon a time, I would have been among the latter crowd, but these days I find myself interested in things like royal weddings. The Crown got me interested for the most part, but Netflix isn’t the only thing playing a role.

I happen to find the concept of royalty interesting. I wouldn’t call myself a monarchist, but I do yearn for the days when leaders at least tried to act dignified & polite. Maybe they weren’t behind the scenes, but they attempted to set an example for the public to follow. Today’s leaders are the complete opposite.

I also find myself enjoying weddings more than I once did. As each day passes, the likelihood of my getting married diminishes. I could be bitter & whine about everybody else finding love while I walk along the boulevard of broken dreams. My teenage & 20s self would go along with this plan. Instead, I find joy in other peoples’ happiness. There’s something beautiful about a wedding. It contains all the promise of tomorrow & new beginnings. There’s none of the cynicism & foreboding of dark times ahead.

Well, that isn’t always true. It certainly isn’t true in pro wrestling. Wrestlers often try to find love amongst themselves, and sometimes we end up with weddings scheduled as worldwide television events. Since they’re wrestlers & happen to be complete psychopaths, things typically go off the rails. There’s no real promise of tomorrow & new beginnings for these poor souls. All we can hope is that their suffering entertains us.

These are the top five weddings in wrestling history.

5. Betty Hanson & George Wagner

Wagner was an undersized but talented wrestler early into his career when he met Betty. They decided to get married at one of George’s shows, and when it drew a bigger house than normal, they took it on the road to other venues. The story says that this is when Wagner figured out that pro wrestling would benefit from more entertainment, and began developing a more charismatic & flamboyant ring persona. Eventually, Gorgeous George was born, and the business was never the same.

4. Elizabeth & “Macho Man” Randy Savage

The Match Made in Heaven co-main evented SummerSlam ’91 alongside the Match Made in Hell. The ceremony itself was relatively uneventful, and to be honest went a bit long for everybody’s liking. What we remember is what happened at the reception, when Jake “The Snake” Roberts presented the newlyweds with a king cobra.

This led into one of the classic feuds of my youth, and one of the classic syndicated TV segments of all time with Jake’s snake taking a bite out of Randy’s arm. Unfortunately, Randy & Elizabeth’s love didn’t last much longer than his feud with Jake did.

3. Billy & Chuck

Who says WWE isn’t progressive? Back in 2002, SmackDown hosted a commitment ceremony involving their top tag team. Billy Gunn & Chuck Palumbo had been working the whole “tag team partners that are frequently secretly fond of each other” gimmick. One thing led to another, and a commitment ceremony was scheduled for an episode of SmackDown. GLADD got on board with it because they were very gullible…everybody knew this wasn’t going to go off without a hitch. Sure enough, Billy & Chuck got cold feet & blamed their stylist Rico for getting them into the mess. Then we found out the minister was actually Eric Bischoff, and it was all a set-up for a 3 Minute Warning beatdown.

For a segment that seemed like it had no potential for anything good, it actually went all right.

2. Lita & Kane

There was all kinds of ridiculousness leading into this, since it was a love storyline in mid-2000s WWE. Kane decided he was in love with Lita. Matt Hardy took offense. Kane beat up Matt a bunch, kidnapped Lita & impregnated her, then beat Matt in a match where the winner got to marry Lita. Could you imagine WWE trying to do this now? Stuff like this is why I’m glad PC & PG are things.

At least the wedding was an entertaining piece of business. Kane wore white & Lita wore black. The priest had a unique ear piercing. The best man & flower girl were little people. Eric Bischoff read from the Bible. Kane declared that Lita would always be his property. Lita said she would always love Matt Hardy. SO MUCH HILARITY!

WWE posted the wedding allegedly in full on YouTube, but left out the best part…Trish Stratus as Maid of Honor.

Honestly, Trish should be enough to make this number one now that I’m thinking about it. Totally second-guessing my decision here.

Honorable Mention: Edge’s Weddings

If anybody in wrestling history would be involved in multiple in-ring weddings, it would be Edge. The guy reached main event status once he accepted the fact that he was a manwhore. First it was Lita. The whole business with her & Matt Hardy sky-rocketed his stock, and even though his attempted wedding with her ended with Kane tombstoning the priest, the message was sent.

After Edge’s relationship with Lita ended, he moved on to Vickie Guerrero. We figured that Edge’s feelings for Vickie had more to do with her status as SmackDown General Manager than anything else. We were proven right at the wedding reception. Triple H showed a video of Edge cheating on Vickie with the wedding planner, Alicia Fox. Somehow the marriage lasted for months afterwards, but the result was divorce.

Fortunately, his real-life marriage with Beth Phoenix is going better.

Honorable Mention: Joyce & Uncle Elmer

“Rowdy” Roddy Piper’s attempt to break up the wedding didn’t work, but Jesse Ventura’s commentary of the ceremony remains one of the great performances by an announcer in television history. Just fantastic stuff by The Body.

1. Stephanie McMahon & Test

Remember The Union? It was a short-lived union of people you oughta respect, Shane. They won a match and got the right to book matches for themselves. Test, instead of putting himself in a wrestling match, opted to book a date with Vince McMahon’s daughter, Stephanie. Probably a smart move for a young wrestler. What better way to get on the boss’s good side than by treating his daughter well? It didn’t work out great. Brother Shane took offense to the relationship, leading to a memorable “Love Her or Leave Her” match at SummerSlam 1999.

Once that business was settled (and once they figured out what to do after Vince Russo left for WCW & took whatever idea he had for all of this with him), the engagement began. Plans were made for a wedding on a live episode of Raw. Test was so confident things would go well that he even demanded a match with Triple H earlier in the evening. He won there, but Triple H would have the last laugh at the end of the night.

Triple H stole Test’s thunder & emerged with Stephanie McMahon’s hand in marriage. Eventually, Stephanie revealed that she was actually on Hunter’s side, and Test was left with…well, not much really. His career never reached the heights it could have had he been a storyline McMahon family member.

It was during the McMahon-Helmsley Era storyline that unfolded afterwards that Stephanie McMahon & Paul Levesque fell in love for real. Had things gone another way, with Stephanie married to Test, not married at all, or somebody other than Triple H getting the nod, who’s to say that they would have ever gotten married in real life?

Where would Triple H have gone as a WWE Superstar had they not gotten together? Would he have 14 world championships to his credit? Probably not. It’s safe to assume he wouldn’t be where he is on the corporate totem pole. He never would have had any say in talent development or acquisition. NXT certainly wouldn’t be a thing, at least not in its current form.

Had Stephanie McMahon stayed sober at her bachelorette party, WWE would be a much different place. That’s why her wedding to Test that was botched due to Triple H marrying her beforehand has to be number one on any list of wrestling weddings.