The film starts out in a bedroom in a grand house on the edge of Bath. A prosperous woman Nicola Lancing has just turned 40 and as invited her nieces Lucy and Louise her mother Angela and sister Veronica along with 8 other friends. She is in the bedroom with her best friend Marion who is of French descent (Frances de la Tour) getting ready for the wedding and putting herself in a beautiful white dress for the party was to be a white party with everyone wearing white. The scene skips to where everyone is around the table enjoying the food when suddenly Nicola stands up and tells everyone to stop talking so everyone does expecting a nice speech when she starts talking about her life and particularly with a man named Hugo Dell (Rupert Everett) and how everyon on the table is responsible for h