While visiting a nearby restaurant/resort with a glassblowing gallery, they admire the glass sculptures that are similar to ones they have seen in New York. Melanie's New York friends arrive for the event.
He later returns, saying he still wants to marry Melanie, and the wedding is immediately set in motion. She and Jake have a heart-to-heart talk, and Melanie understands why he never signed their divorce papers.Īndrew arrives to surprise Melanie, but upon learning her true background and that Jake was her husband, he angrily leaves. Intimidated by the city and her success, he returned home to make something of himself first. Melanie reconciles with her friends and learns that after she split with Jake, he had followed her to New York to win her back. Bobby Ray backs up her pretense that she is a relative and the family mansion is her childhood home. She is cornered there by Kate's assistant, sent there to gather information on Melanie's background. Melanie goes to the Carmichael plantation and apologizes to Bobby Ray. The next morning, Melanie finds the signed document on her bed. Later, at a local bar, Melanie gets drunk, insults her old school friends, and outs her old childhood friend, Bobby Ray Bailey. Jake finally relents and agrees to the divorce and promises to return the signed papers the next morning. After Jake orders Melanie out of his house, Melanie empties Jake's checking account, hoping to spur him into ending the marriage.
Melanie visits Jake, who has avoided signing the divorce papers.
Meanwhile, Kate Hennings, Andrew's mother and the Mayor of New York City, doubts Melanie's suitability to wed her son, whom she is grooming to run for President of the United States. After wealthy Andrew Hennings proposes, Melanie returns to Alabama to announce her engagement to her parents and finalize a divorce from her husband Jake, whom she left after a miscarriage caused them to become estranged. In the present day, Melanie is a successful New York fashion designer who has adopted the surname "Carmichael" to hide her poor Southern roots. Jake asserts that they will be married one day. The movie is a fantasy, of course, but Witherspoon has said that Melanie’s struggles actually mirror some of her own experiences as a Louisiana-born, Tennessee-raised actress trying to make it in Hollywood.On a beach in the fictional town of Pigeon Creek, Alabama, 10-year-olds Jake Perry and Melanie Smooter inspect the result of lightning striking sand. The only solution is to return to Pigeon Creek and get the divorce finalized, but because this is a romantic comedy, that’s not how things between Melanie and Jake play out. The problem is that she’s already married - to Jake Perry (Lucas), the childhood sweetheart who was supposed to have divorced her years ago but never signed the papers. That plan seems to be working out for her until she gets engaged to Andrew Hennings ( Patrick Dempsey), the wealthy son of NYC’s mayor ( Candice Bergen). Witherspoon stars as Melanie Smooter, a New York City fashion designer who hides her Pigeon Creek, Alabama, origins by using the last name “Carmichael.” “Small-town girl moves to the big city and forgets her roots” is a plot so clichéd at this point that it shows up in about 90 percent of made-for-TV Christmas movies, but in Sweet Home Alabama, it just works. You can’t take the honky-tonk out of the girl! Sweet Home Alabama became a classic rom-com almost as soon as it hit theaters in 2002, thanks to the charm - and chemistry - of leads Reese Witherspoon and Josh Lucas.