All weddings, except those with shotguns in evidence, are wonderful.

Liz Smith’s line is a wry, tabloid-wise compliment to the social ritual of marriage. By exempting weddings “with shotguns in evidence,” she invokes the cliché of the “shotgun wedding,” a marriage compelled by coercion or scandal rather than mutual desire. The humor depends on the contrast between the idealized public pageantry of weddings—family, romance, celebration—and the darker possibility of pressure or threat behind the scenes. The quip also reflects Smith’s persona as a sharp observer of celebrity and society life: she affirms the charm of the occasion while puncturing sentimentality with a knowing aside about human motives.