'Modern Family' goes all out for Cam and Mitchell

LOS ANGELES — How many people can fit into Mitchell and Cam's living room on the Modern Family set?

More than five dozen wedding guests crowded into the tight space, just the latest venue for a mishap-laden ceremony forced to move to various locations over the course of a two-part, fifth-season finale that begins Wednesday (ABC, 9 p.m. ET/PT).

"The scope of this is much bigger than anything we've ever done," co-creator Christopher Lloyd says of the episodes, which feature 22 speaking parts, 19 shooting locations and, he jokes, "a cast of thousands." Guest stars include Nathan Lane as Pepper and Elizabeth Banks as Sal — friends of the couple, each of whom has a role to play in the wedding — and Barry Corbin and Celia Weston as Cam's parents, who are having their own marital issues.

Although the fact that two men are getting married has cultural significance and connects to a historical moment, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed same-sex marriage in California, the series ultimately is focusing on the universality of weddings and marital unions.

"I think that, as with many of the episodes we tell about Mitch (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and Cam (Eric Stonestreet), people will relate to it not because they're gay, but because they are people facing a domestic situation that straight couples and gay couples alike face all the time," Lloyd says. "They're anxious about their wedding day."

They've got reason to be, as they have to deal with getting a wedding tuxedo from a closed dry cleaner; juggling multiple officiants and venues; and escaping a California tradition, wildfires.

By the time the guests gather in the couple's living room, wedding planner Pepper Saltzman (Lane), harried yet still snarky, is jealous of a musician who hasn't arrived at the new location after getting in a traffic accident. He laments: "Why do good things happen to everyone but me?"

Ferguson says, "a normal wedding probably wouldn't have this many bumps, but our writers have to find a way to make what can be a kind of standard event something special."

In at least one way, the story does apply to many same-sex couples. Mitchell and Cam, who have long lived together and are bringing up a daughter, Lily, reflect many enduring partners who only recently have had the opportunity to get married, says Ferguson, who married Justin Mikita in July.

"There are a lot of people who do have established families that they've raised together ... and now it's legal for them to get married. That's the last piece of the puzzle," he says. "Seems backward that they have to do it that way, but it's great that that's available to them now."

With three interconnected families at the heart of the series, big events such as a wedding, a birth or a child going off to college — all situations Family has explored — "ripple outward" and affect many characters, Lloyd says. Mitchell's old-school father, Jay (Ed O'Neill), has some difficulty coming to terms with the wedding ceremony, causing friction with his son.

"He's always loved his son, but he didn't like to think about" his sexual orientation, O'Neill says. Although Jay has made strides over the course of the series, "Every time he thinks he's come so far, he realizes he's not too far at all."

Still, Jay must come to terms with it, O'Neill says. "He realizes that he has to if he wants to keep his son's love."

Jay's perspective is important, says Julie Bowen, who plays Mitchell's sister, Claire. "I feel like Jay is the way into the show for so many people. He gives a voice to audience members who aren't on board."

Family embraces sentiment as well as slapstick, and the two episodes offer both, Bowen says.

"A bunch of us went to Jesse's real wedding last year. We were all ecstatic when gay marriage was finally made legal. We didn't think we had much more feeling left about it," says Bowen. "Yet, when we got to the part when (Mitchell and Cam) exchange vows — partly about them being gay and the importance of the moment but mostly about two people sharing their lives — we cried for real all over again."

Stonestreet acknowledges the significance of the union, but says it won't change the characters' day-to-day lives.

"They've done a good job writing the relationship (where it) transcends their sexuality and makes it clear that they're a couple that bicker and argue and love each other," he says. "I think they've been married essentially since America met them, but this makes it official."