'Downton Abbey' wedding: EP explains why we didn't see more of it

On last night’s Downton Abbey season 3 premiere, we saw Mary (Michelle Dockery) and Matthew (Dan Stevens) finally say “I do.” Well, technically, we didn’t: Producers decided not to show the couple’s vows, leaving some fans wanting more. “Funnily enough, we did consider how much of the wedding to show. But I figured that audiences have seen many hundreds of screen weddings and there isn’t much to show of that that’s new,” exec producer Gareth Neame tells EW in an email. “The driving point of the episode was whether Mary and Matthew would hurdle over the final obstacle in their path to happiness in this opening episode of the new season. All that the audience needed to know was that Mary does, in the end, show up! And Julian Fellowes’ final little joke is in Mary’s last line. When Matthew says he was worried she wouldn’t show up, she replies that ‘I wouldn’t want to be predictable.’ Well, in a way, we didn’t want the predictable ending either (i.e. showing the whole wedding ceremony and vows and so on) and chose a hard ending the moment the audience could be sure that Mary and Matthew would finally tie the knot.”

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