WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Bridgerton season 2.

Kate and Anthony’s roller-coaster romance ends with the pair happily married, but Bridgerton season 2 chooses to keep their wedding off-screen. Unlike Simon and Daphne, who were married before either believed the other truly loved them or wanted the marriage, Kate and Anthony are married once they’ve already declared their love for one another. As such, it may have been expected that Bridgerton depicting Anthony and Kate’s wedding would make more sense as the ultimate payoff to their love story, as viewers had yet to see a happy Bridgerton wedding day.

For slow-burn TV romances, weddings are typically the highlight of their love stories, as it means all of the strife that went into the will-they-won’t-they dynamic has finally paid off. However, this hasn’t been the case for the two weddings that have so far been depicted in Bridgerton. Simon and Daphne’s wedding saw hardly any happy faces as Daphne felt she forced Simon into the marriage, with Simon likewise believing she’d resent him for marrying her while knowing he would never give her children. While the pair’s marriage ultimately became a happy pairing in the Bridgerton season 1 ending, the next season only featured one onscreen wedding: Anthony and Edwina's, Kate’s younger sister. They never made it to the “I do” part of the nuptials, but it still continued Bridgerton’s trend of refusing to give viewers a love-filled wedding.

Related: Bridgerton: What Happens Next To Anthony & Kate (Book Story Explained)

Since the primary focus of the Bridgerton siblings’ love stories has been the passionate courtships (or lack thereof) and overcoming the resistance of their true feelings, a wedding isn’t the true payoff in this series. Rather, the ultimate payoff for both Simon and Daphne and Anthony and Kate occurs when they learn to fully embrace their love for their counterpart. Hence, Bridgerton season 2’s most important onscreen wedding never would have been between Anthony and Kate Sharma, as the climactic turning point of their romance occurred at his failed wedding with Edwina. It wasn’t until the wedding that Anthony was able to finally admit his feelings for Kate and choose love over duty, with Kate similarly having a crucial moment in which she admits her love for Anthony even though it betrays her prioritized duty to Edwina. Consequently, the reason why Anthony and Kate's wedding happens off-screen is that their marriage is not actually the climactic moment it may be for other couples.

bridgerton season 2 anthony kate wedding

As such, Bridgerton season 2 did, in fact, have an important wedding, it just wasn’t between Kate and Anthony. Since their love story was focused on choosing their own happiness over their duty to others and finally learning to let their guard down around their families, it was much more powerful for Bridgerton season 2 to show them happily married around the Bridgerton siblings rather than depict an orderly wedding. The pair had been bound to honor, duty, and the pressures of expectations until Kate and Anthony admitted their “vexing” feelings for one another. As such, the formality of a wedding still would have placed them back into their familiar confines of structure, even though they would have been happily saying “I do.” Instead, it was far more important to conclude Anthony and Kate’s love story by comfortably and casually embracing their love for one another around the Bridgerton family.

Similar to how Anthony and Kate’s romance didn’t require as many sex scenes in Bridgerton season 2 to be compelling, depicting a traditional wedding wouldn’t have been the best demonstration of their happiness. It also may have become slightly fatiguing if Bridgerton season 2 included two incredibly lavish, enormous weddings that were both focused on Anthony and Kate. To avoid competing with the importance of their wedding events, Bridgerton made the astute decision to show a genuinely happy moment during Anthony and Kate’s honeymoon, which has a much more intimate, powerful payoff in the end.

Next: Bridgerton: The Tulips Anthony Gives Kate Mean More Than You Think