How long does it take to be with someone before wedding bells ring? It’s an age-old question with varying opinions. “Virgin River” lasted six seasons and 64 episodes.

The Netflix romantic drama capped its sixth season, streaming now, with the long-awaited wedding of Mel Monroe and Jack Sheridan, the series’ central couple, whose relationship fits unapologetically into the category of escapist fantasy. And what better time for viewers to be reminded to celebrate love than in a festive haze of last-minute gift shopping and financial stress?

For a show in which time passes at a glacial pace – the first five seasons of the series take place over the course of about a year – the fictional couple, played by Alexandra Breckenridge and Martin Henderson, still managed to reach the altar lasting twists that would have resulted in real life couples exchanging some awkward breakup texts. Over the course of the show, they were kidnapped by illegal marijuana growers; learned from his ex that Jack was fathering twins – until it turned out to be a lie; Mel was robbed at knifepoint while Jack was shot; Later, when they finally come to an agreement about having children and expecting, they are dealt a serious blow when Mel suffers a miscarriage.

They had the “for better, for worse” part of their engagement under wraps, to say the least.

“My reaction was, ‘Good, it’s about time!’ “Henderson said in a recent video call. “I feel like the audience has wanted this moment for so long. Look, it’s a romance novel. What does the audience want besides hot, steamy sex? They want eternal love, marriage and family and a happily ever after. I think we found a good balance: we dragged it out long enough and annoyed the audience long enough.”

“It’s the moment people have been waiting for since they started watching,” Breckenridge said.

Based on the bestselling book series by Robin Carr, the drama is set in a charming small town in Northern California and revolves around the courtship between a nurse who leaves her life in LA behind to start a new chapter after the death of her husband. and a veteran who owns the town’s popular bar. For showrunner and executive producer Patrick Sean Smith, who began his young adult career on shows like “Summerland” and “Greek,” it was a gratifying experience to show that a second chance at love is possible at a different stage of life.

“These stories are so much richer than just the purity of first love,” he said. “There’s more nuance to it.”

Mel and Jack marry at the beginning of the second book, with less fanfare than on screen. In the series, her meddling but well-intentioned friend Hope McCrea (Annette O’Toole), the town’s mayor, persuades the couple to let her plan the event – this is a way for the show’s writers to have a more elaborate affair start as a simple one that suits the couple’s style. This rustic wedding features ice sculptures.

“I felt like if I had stayed true to the book and had Mel and Jack get married in his parents’ backyard in Sacramento, I would have had to make sure my house wasn’t listed because they (the fans) would have picked me and my family up. said Smith. “It felt sensible to move on from that. I had the pleasure of speaking to Robin Carr and letting her know what was going on and she was just so excited that we were going to make it a big event. It just felt like six seasons of reaching this epic milestone for this couple that had to be something big.”

The show’s creative team felt the pressure of fan expectations. Smith said the show’s set designer, Mecca Thornhill, put it this way: “Everyone has a different version in their head of what Mel and Jack’s wedding should look like.”

“We wanted it to be Pinterest-ready,” Smith said. “We knew we wanted a cozy atmosphere. We wanted a farm atmosphere. We knew we wanted something in nature, which was tricky given the time period we were filming in Vancouver. And we were just lucky. It was a beautiful day. I told everyone I prayed to Taylor Swift, and this is what happens when you pray to Taylor. She makes it possible.”

It was a considerable affair, but… quite The city wasn’t there. According to Tony Devenyi, the show’s production designer, the fictional community is said to have a population of about 600 people, but only 120 chairs were purchased for the ceremony. Four or five ice sculptures were commissioned. And they had to take into account for the location that they had to be prepared for the unexpected. The original wedding location was quite far outside of Vancouver, where the show is primarily filmed. But concerns about limited options for filming changes should the unpredictable June weather intervene led them to move locations three or four days before filming.

“Virgin River already has a style, feel and charisma that we really wanted to showcase at the wedding,” said Devenyi. “It’s still a small town atmosphere. We always wanted to make sure that people felt like they could actually achieve this when they came together – they could do these things without it being some kind of Hollywood wedding.”

The pressure went beyond the aesthetics of the wedding. Smith knew he had to deliver stunning pieces of romance – like the moment when, just as the ceremony begins, the two gallop on horseback to revisit the riverbank that served as the backdrop for the start of their relationship or post – ceremonial coitus in make-believe of the firelight in their hut.

“From the beginning of the season, I always wanted to start over,” Smith said. “That was a little bit of our North Star. After so many speed bumps and obstacles, I knew I needed a moment.”

And the love scene? “It was My Ice sculpture,” Smith said. “They have to have ice sculptures and have sex. There must be atmospheric lighting. We have to have the perfect song. The challenge in preparing the cabin is making it look like what most newlywed suites look like in everyday life. So what do we add then? My pitch was ice sculptures. And they said no to that. I thought, ‘Okay, good.’ There are no ice sculptures in the cabin. But we had rose petals and stuff.”

Everything worked effectively for Henderson.

“When she (Breckenridge as Mel) finally walks down the aisle, I was so overwhelmed with emotion from Jack’s perspective, just because this is the woman he’s going to marry and he loves so much,” said Henderson, whose character ultimately dies trading in his tuxedo for his Navy uniform for the ceremony. “I couldn’t help but feel everything the characters went through over the seasons, how much they meant to each other. I forgot to take my hat off as I was supposed to because I was pretty engrossed in the whole thing.”

As with any wedding, the bride’s dress can be both the star and the headache. During Mel and Jack’s first dance – to a song by Mel’s father Everett (John Allen Nelson), which was actually written for the show by Wesley Schultz of the Lumineers – Breckenridge said the dress fuss continued to fade, leading to Henderson stumbled upon over and over again. Both suspect that this was the trigger for the whispers he whispers to her during the dance.

Breckenridge said she wore fleece-lined leggings that gave the illusion of skin under her wedding dress to withstand the cold temperatures. “I would jump out of the dress; The cloakroom women would come and unzip it. And I would wear these ridiculous things. It looks like I’m naked, but I’m not. And I would bounce around in Ugg shoes. People looked at me. They were so scared because they thought I was just walking around naked.”

The shrug Mel wears over the wedding dress during the reception is actually the one Breckenridge wore at her own wedding: “I had my husband FedEx it to me overnight.”

The two episodes were filmed over a period of 16 days. Smith said he viewed it as an event more familiar to the television model, as the wedding spanned the final two episodes of the season. The 10 episodes of the sixth season take place over three weeks leading up to the wedding. Smith said there is no debate about whether the wedding should be postponed any further.

“I personally didn’t want to do that to the fans,” he said. “I think there is a risk of erosion and you can only dangle the carrot for so long. I also didn’t want to get to the point where the obvious series finale is the inevitability of the wedding.”

In the closing moments of the season finale of “Virgin River,” the wedding glow had faded just enough to set up some cliffhangers for next season. For Mel and Jack, that meant exploring the possibility of adopting the baby of one of Mel’s pregnant patients.

“As we look at Season 7, we’re trying to find new dynamics in Mel and Jack’s relationship that feel different now that they’re married to make it clear that marriage is important,” Smith said. “Sometimes on TV shows it’s a prop where you just wear a wedding ring.”