Philadelphia socialites Tracy Lord and C.K. Dexter Haven married impulsively; their marriage and subsequent divorce are equally passionate. They broke up when Dexter's drinking, a mechanism to cope with Tracy's unforgiving manner toward Dexter's imperfections, became excessive. Two years after their break-up, Tracy is about to remarry in a ceremony at her family's mansion. Her new bridegroom is nouveau-riche businessman and aspiring politician George Kittredge, who is otherwise an ordinary man who idolizes Tracy. The day before the wedding, three unexpected guests show up at the Lord mansion: Macaulay Connor (Mike to his friends) and Elizabeth Imbrie--both friends of Tracy's absent brother Junius--and Dexter. He works for the tabloid Spy magazine and made a deal with its publisher and editor Sidney Kidd to get a story on Tracy's wedding--the wedding of the year--in return for Kidd not publishing a salacious story with accompanying photographs of Tracy's father, Seth Lord, with New York showgirl Tina Marra. In reality, Mike and Liz are the reporter and photographer for Spy. Mike and Liz don't particularly like this assignment or working for Kidd, but their chosen other fields as serious writer and painter don't pay the bills. A suspicious Tracy is onto them, and when Dexter admits the truth, she decides to turn the tables on Mike and Liz. But hours before the wedding, as the more self-assured Dexter and Liz get to work on how to get the Lords out from under Spy's threats, Tracy and Mike, both inebriated, go on a journey of self-discovery with Tracy ultimately coming to her realizations a little faster than Mike.—Huggo