Offbeat fashion student Betsy Hopper and her straight-laced investment-banker fiancé Jake Lovell just want an intimate little wedding reception, but Betsy's father Eddie, a Long Island construction contractor, feels so threatened by Jake's rich WASP parents that he blows the ceremony up into a bank-breaking showpiece, sending his wife Lola into a financial panic. Pressure from Betsy's extended family to include their joint Jewish and Italian-Catholic heritage in the ceremony does little to assuage her worries, and then there's her older sister Connie; their parents assume she's still single because she has the audacity to pursue the unfeminine profession of police officer. With all of his funds tied up in the money pit of a house he's building, Betsy's dad must turn to his crooked brother-in-law Oscar for financial assistance, and soon a soft-spoken but menacing young mobster named Stevie Dee is supervising Eddie's construction project and casting his romantic aspirations toward the clueless Connie.