The long-running soap is celebrating a major milestone.
The Young and the Restless is turning 50! In a sneak peek of Entertainment Tonight's upcoming anniversary special for the iconic soap opera, the cast details one of the most memorable parts of the show -- the weddings!
In 2013, Melody Thomas Scott told ET she'd already attended 13 weddings on the show, while Eric Braeden joked that he was "suffering from amnesia" when it came to his wedding count. The love continued into the next decade, as Peter Bergman told ET in 2021, "I have been to more weddings as Jack Abbott than I have been to as Peter Bergman."
That's a fair assessment, as the soap opera has put on more than 100 weddings throughout its half-century run. That many weddings means there were some iconic fashion moments, from Michelle Stafford's Monique Lhuillier dress to Scott's "stunning, beautiful, 30-pound gown" that was worth $20,000 in 1984.
Sharon Case notes in the special, which will air March 27 on CBS, that the celebrations are always "big" and "very beautiful," while Christian LeBlanc and Tracey E. Bregman open up about the real emotions that come into play on wedding days.
"I cried when she came down the aisle for our wedding," LeBlanc admits, with Bregman adding, "I felt like I was getting married for real and I was married in real life at that time."
The drama the characters go through and wedding days is sometimes matched by that of the actors playing them.
"I had to deliver my vows at literally 10 minutes to one a.m. and they were pulling the plug at one. And it was long!" Bregman recalls.
Camryn Grimes concurs, noting, "We've done lots of weddings on the show and they're tough days. It's a lot of people to wrangle. It's chaos!"
That didn't hold true when Grimes filmed Mariah Copeland's wedding to Tessa Porter back in 2022, the soap opera's first same-sex nuptials.
"With the Teriah wedding, that day was so different," Grimes says in the special, after telling ET last year of the nuptials, "It's a celebration and that's really the best thing that you can have when you have a same-sex couple on television is just celebrate it."
At the end of the day, Joshua Morrow says in the special, "If you have a soap opera without love and romance, I mean, it's not a soap opera in my eyes."
ET spoke with the soap opera's stars on the 50th anniversary red carpet earlier this month, and they all reflected on The Young and the Restless' staying power.
"Without the fans, we wouldn't be here... and our wonderful creators, Bill and Lee Bell," Scott told ET. "They were very specific when they first started the show how they wanted it to be, how they wanted it to look, how they wanted it to feel for the viewers watching, and I think that we have maintained those even today, 50 years later."
"I think at this point a lot of people have basically grown up with us and I think they love to continue to come back and see emotionally rich, socially relevant storylines," Bregman added.
Grimes also weighed in on the show's long-time success, telling ET, "There is this connectivity that happens when you're in somebody's home every single day. When you have a show that you could almost hand down generationally, it creates this bond that you have with your audience that is so, so rare."
CBS presents The Young and the Restless 50th Anniversary Celebration, an Entertainment Tonight special, will premiere Monday, March 27 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on the CBS Television Network and will be available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+.
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