Throughout the weeks preceding the grandiose celebration of love, audiences expect the release of dime-a-dozen but enjoyable love stories that won't interrupt the tumult of the awards season.

The Wedding Date, starring Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney, fulfills expectations. It's a fun, romantic comedy -- it's not supposed to be on par with the Oscar contenders -- but it does raise a significant question.

Why does Dermot Mulroney always seem to choose movies involving weddings or mullets?

In this particular story, Messing stars as the anxious, frazzled Kat Ellis, a single girl preparing for her younger sister's wedding.

To have the nerve to face her family from hell, she hires herself a $6,000 male escort named Nick Mercer (the gorgeous Mulroney). Doesn't six grand seem like an awful lot? Especially since Kat apparently buys the first-class plane tickets to London.

Yes, but my favorite part of this movie is that the wedding festivities take place in London. Before you groan and say, "Oh what is this, a Friends copy?" think about it -- men with British accents. I'm sold.

Over in London, we meet Amy (played by Amy Adams), the unbelievably annoying bride-to-be. Insight into her personality: She asks Kat if she can have her drink, and Kat smiles and puts it down on the bar for her. Amy motions with her straw that, oops, my straw won't reach there, and makes Kat push the glass over so she doesn't have to move. Yeah. Bridezilla has somehow scored Edward, played by the best Brit I can think of besides Hugh Grant and Colin Farrell -- Jack Davenport of Coupling. (You lot may know him as Capt. Norrington from Pirates of the Caribbean.)

The horrible part of this situation is that Kat's ex-fiance Jeffrey (played be Jeremy Sheffield), who dumped her out of the blue a few years back, is Edward's best friend and best man.

Hence Kat's need to show off Nick, a perfect, debonair date in order to make Jeffrey wish he never let her go. Nick makes Kat feel like she is the most wonderful woman in the world, and he even dances well.

He charms the entire family, and almost breaks through the ice queen exterior that is Kat's mother-from-hell. I don't know what I would do with a woman like this in my family. I wanted to slap her the whole time, it was great. And the actress playing her is Holland Taylor, who has been in plenty of films, but I have to cite for her thrilling role as Dean McMann on Saved By The Bell: The College Years.

So, the extremely long list of pre-wedding activities plays out, including a golf-themed bachelorette party that allows so much fun with argyle.

Nick works his magic to make it seem like he and Kat are madly in love, and if you have seen the previews, you know that their pretending starts to spin into reality as they fall for each other.

Meanwhile, we hear conversations of Jeffrey's revealing that he is still in love with a woman who is now with another man. Obviously, he is referring to Kat, right?

Her mission would be accomplished. However, Kat, with Nick's welcome help, is beginning to realize that she doesn't need to pine over the worthless Jeffrey anymore and that she deserves better. And you relish that the ex yearns for her, and you know that she can't possibly choose him over Nick.

Dermot without a mullet is simply divine, by the way. Definitely worth paying NYC ticket prices for. But not $6,000.

For anyone pegging The Wedding Date as a copy of other comparable romantic flicks, give it up. It is what it's supposed to be -- a simple, fun movie in which beautiful people get together by chance. Well, if chance involved calling rent-a-date. And if such beautiful people weren't a tad de-beautified by apparently amateur makeup artists and hairstylists.

The movie may not be original at all, but it offers a good time and an hour and a half (it's short) during which you do not have to think. It's a new experience, and one that is quite pleasurable.

Without much effort, I guessed the entire "complicated" story in advance and guessed the plot twists as they unraveled before my eyes. I felt like a genius. It's certainly a fun time that leaves you hopeful that true love awaits in your future. Except you might have to pay a whole lot to find it.