a shotgun wedding

shotgun wedding

A wedding that happens quickly due to an unplanned pregnancy. After finding out she was pregnant, Gina and Tom had a shotgun wedding.
See also: shotgun, wedding
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

a shotgun wedding

1. A shotgun wedding is a wedding that happens quickly because the woman is pregnant. The sort of marriage that starts with a shotgun wedding never quite escapes from the feeling that one partner or the other has been trapped.
2. A shotgun wedding is when two companies or organizations join together suddenly because they need to. The committee was created through a shotgun wedding between the community relations commission and the race relations board.
See also: shotgun, wedding
Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed.

a ˌshotgun ˈwedding/ˈmarriage

(old-fashioned, informal) a marriage which takes place because the woman is pregnant
This expression probably refers to the father of a woman, who threatens to shoot the man unless he marries her.
See also: marriage, shotgun, wedding
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary
See also:
  • shotgun wedding
  • penny wedding
  • shotgun marriage
  • a shotgun wedding/marriage
  • hot ticket
  • Catholic gap
  • wedding tackle
  • dance at (someone's) wedding
  • dance at wedding
  • white wedding
References in periodicals archive
Affectionately known as 'Sin City', it's where people choose to tie the knot in a shotgun wedding or enjoy a wild weekend.
"And given that NW just broke the news that Camila is reportedly expecting Leo's sprog, it sounds like it might be a shotgun wedding," (https://www.pressreader.com/australia/nw/20190805/281681141497981) NW wrote.
"I know when I got pregnant, a lot of people were assuming, 'Oh, they'll just do a shotgun wedding'.
According to reports, Chloe, 27, has organised a shotgun wedding to her hot felon fella - and it's going to be pretty soon.
LIAM CONNOR 2007-8 They had a shotgun wedding then a tragic stillbirth before Liam was murdered by Tony Gordon.
IT smacks of a shotgun wedding, but the merger of the beleaguered Dewsbury College with Huddersfield Technical College seems to be the only way forward for the North Kirklees establishment.
One of those films you feel you've seen 20 times before, The Wedding Date is more like a shotgun wedding in that you'd have to put a gun to my head to get me to watch it again.
"My first wedding was a shotgun wedding basically," says Lynne.
INTRIGUING Western adventure, starring Guy Madison as a gunslinger who accepts a shotgun wedding to save himself from the gallows.
The idea is, the girls will propose to their chaps and then whisk them down the aisle for something of a shotgun wedding. And we'll find out if they've been successful tomorrow night.
24 NATURE that the formerly aloof argon has been coerced into the chemical equivalent of a shotgun wedding.
It was a shotgun wedding, and you were so drunk at the ceremony I'm surprised you still remember your name." She had her own logic.
You can't talk about objects in the early '60s without mentioning Dine (born in 1935) and his older colleagues, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, all rummaging around to see what object could be forced into a shotgun wedding with a canvas.
She added: "But she's not going to be so impressed when she finds he wants a shotgun wedding so their child is born in wedlock."
When the old councils merged, it was dubbed a shotgun wedding as neither Bedworth nor Nuneaton wanted to be political bedfellows.