From Tony and CJ to Scott and Charlene: six unforgettable weddings on Australian soap operas

Before we had reality TV confections like Married at First Sight and Don’t Tell the Bride, TV tragics would get their wedding fix from that age-old classic the soap opera.

A wedding episode is almost guaranteed ratings gold for a TV drama. They are also often accompanied by media blitzes, in which actors don their characters’ clothes over and over for photoshoots and fan meet-and-greets. “If you want to get on to the cover of TV Week, one of the best ways to do that is to have a happy couple in wedding finery,” Andrew Mercado, an Australian film historian, says.

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Weddings are cathartic for viewers – and a classic exit strategy. They act as a way to give beloved characters a happy ending before they ride off into the sunset, perhaps to attempt a career in Hollywood. Here’s a by no means exhaustive look at some of the pivotal wedding moments that have defined Australia’s soap opera landscape.

6. Toni and CJ on E Street (1992)

Set in a fictional, working-class Sydney neighbourhood, E Street ran from 1989 to 1993. Although its heyday was an ongoing serial killer plot line in 1991 and 1992, it also delivered a peak soap opera moment well after Mr Bad’s ugly exit.

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Toni, played by future pop star and presenter Toni Pearen, and CJ, a former bad boy played by Adrian Lee, had a difficult path from proposal to marriage. After popping the question, CJ was hit by a car and lost his sight. Then just as Toni, in pink satin, walks down the aisle, a flash of light that would make even a casual VFX fan shudder struck behind CJ’s eyes. As his bride approached he regained his vision. “You’re beautiful” he told her, and really meant it. Magic.

This miraculous recovery would be mirrored three years later at the wedding of Shane (Dieter Brummer) and Angel (Melissa George) on Home and Away, which saw a wheelchair-bound Angel regain her strength to hobble down the aisle.

5. Sally’s three white dresses on Home and Away (2000-07)

While Angel and Shane’s wedding remains a fan favourite, the true heart of Home and Away has always been Sally Fletcher, played by Kate Ritchie, who spent 20 years growing up in the fictional beachside town of Summer Bay.

Although it doesn’t quite match The Bold and the Beautiful’s Brooke and Ridge, who’ve shared a whopping 11 wedding ceremonies, Sally put on bridal whites three times in the soap’s history – but only once successfully. She fled her first wedding after a her fiance’s attempts at philandering were revealed mid-ceremony; had a happy second wedding, but lost her husband Flynn to cancer; jilted her third fiance, Brad, on their wedding day after realising she was not ready to move on from Flynn. Not a bad run for Australia’s sweetheart.

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While the final broken engagement was used to write actor Chris Sadrinna off the show in 2007, Ritchie’s exit was a different kind of happily ever after. In a multi-episode send-off arc in 2008, Sally departed Summer Bay to travel the world.

4. Tony and Tania’s publicity bonanza on The Young Doctors (1978)

In a precursor to many of today’s medical dramas, the titular Young Doctors (and nurses) on this long-running Australian soap spent as much time romancing each other as they did saving lives. But the biggest wedding of all – which Mercado suggests may have been one of the most expensive in Australian TV history – was between sexy Spanish doctor Tony and the young nurse Tania, played by Tony Alvarez and Judy McBurney respectively.

At the time episodes did not air simultaneously across the country so to coincide with their wedding’s air dates Alvarez and McBurney embarked on a national publicity tour. Channel Nine rented real wedding chapels in every capital city and the actors staged mock weddings for huge groups of fans. Afterwards the pair were flooded with wedding gifts from the public. While memories of the tour linger, the on-screen romance proved less permanent. Alvarez left the show the following year.

3. Rose and Julian on Number 96 (1972)

As the first Australian television show to feature nudity, and a homosexual kiss, Number 96 broke many boundaries. But not all of them were positive. Vivienne Garrett, who portrayed Rose Godolfus, broke her contract with the series after a plot line called for her character to “enjoy” a rape scene.

The writers gave Garrett a classic soapy exit – a big wedding ceremony. The publicity surrounding the nuptials was massive. On the same day the wedding scene was filmed, the production company held a mock wedding reception at a hotel in Kings Cross. “I was told all the journos and the media were going to be the guests,” Garrett recalls. Straight after filming, still in costume, the cast were whisked to a reception. There were speeches, a bouquet toss and, as it was a Jewish wedding, even stomped glasses: “I just thought ‘What’s this about?’ We’re blurring the lines of reality!’ ”

Because of its controversial subject matter, most children were forbidden from watching Number 96 but in Jewish homes around Australia whole families tuned in to watch the wedding.

2. Vicky and Simon by popular demand on A Country Practice (1983)

The public wants what it wants, and sometimes it is up to a soap opera to give it to them – with a side of cute animals. The relationship between vet Vicky and doctor Simon on A Country Practice “was a situation where the nation was kind of involved”, says Mercado. Although the writers were dancing around the golden couple’s pairing, the audience was firm. Reportedly during a telethon which featured actors Penny Cook and Grant Dodwell “someone rang up and said ‘We’ll donate a $1,000 if Vicki and Simon kiss’ ”, Mercado says. Although the wedding ceremony was later pipped by another A Country Practice storyline (Molly’s death from leukaemia in 1984), at the time it was one of the most watched events in Australian television history.

1. Charlene and Scott on Neighbours (1987)

There are soap opera weddings, and then there’s Charlene and Scott – arguably one of the biggest moments in Australian television history. The culmination of Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan’s on-screen romance remains one of the most-watched soap opera episodes in Australia, and pulled in almost 20m British viewers, making it the third-most-watched show of the year in the UK. It also made the cover of Time Magazine Australia, featured on postage stamps two decades later, and Charlene’s puffy white and peach wedding dress remains immortalised in the collection of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.

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Although the wedding was rumoured to have been sparked by complaints from conservative viewers, upset that the couple had moved in together and were “living in sin”, Mercado suggests this controversy was a ploy by the writers who always “knew they were already going to marry them off”.

Since then Neighbours has managed to recapture a bit of the magic, by reusing the church where Charlene and Scott wed (twice), re-airing footage of the ceremony, and even sending Margot Robbie’s character Donna down the aisle to a cover of Charlene’s wedding song, Suddenly, on the show’s 6,000th episode. Then in 2018 the show featured its first gay wedding after the public had voted “yes” to marriage equality the year before.

Bonus: the wedding that started Kath and Kim

It may not be a soap, but it’s still worth remembering that one of Australia’s most famous comedies began with a wedding, on a sketch show that lasted only one season. From 1994 to 1995 Magda Szubanski, Jane Turner and Gina Riley chronicled the disastrous lead-up to Kim Day’s wedding in a series of sketches on Big Girl’s Blouse. It took seven years for the trio’s genius creation to begin its second life, but luckily they gave the public far more time to “look at moi” when Kath and Kim returned to screens in 2002.