A young Greek woman falls in love with a non-Greek and struggles to get her family to accept him while she comes to terms with her heritage and cultural identity.
Thirty-year-old Fotoula "Toula" Portokalos (Nia Vardalos) is a member of a large, loud, intrusive Greek family that only wants her to get married and have children and feed everyone. Her father Gus is worried that Toula is starting to look old.
Toula was sent to Greek school and was never a popular girl. Their house was modeled after the Parthenon and Gus believed that any ailment from poison ivy to skin cancer could be cured by Windex. Gus was proud of his Greek heritage and claimed that he could find the Greek root to any word in any language.Frumpy and meek, she works in her family's Chicago restaurant, "Dancing Zorba's", but longs to do something more with her life. While working one day, a school teacher named Ian Miller (John Corbett) comes into the restaurant, and Toula develops a crush on him.
That evening, Toula tells her parents that she wants to go to college to learn about computers. She says that with computers she will be able the update the software systems at the restaurant and cut out wasteful expenditure with some accurate inventorying.
But her father, Gus (Michael Constantine), becomes emotional, claiming Toula wants to leave him. Her mother, Maria (Lainie Kazan), comforts Toula and convinces Gus to agree to Toula's idea.Athena (Stavroula Logothettis) is Toula's sister and Nick (Louis Mandylor) is her brother. Voula is Toula's aunt, and is married to Taki (Gerry Mendicino), with kids Angelo (Joey Fatone) and Nikki (Gia Carides). Yiayia (Bess Meisler) is Gus's mother, who has lost her memory and believes that she had been kidnapped by the Turkish.
Nick is a cook at Zorba's. Voula nags about everything in life. Athena married young and already has 3 kids.As the weeks pass, Toula gains more confidence and changes her image, switching her thick-framed glasses for contact lenses, styling her hair, and wearing makeup and brighter clothes that show off her figure. She sees a notice for a course on computers and tourism and tells her Aunt Voula (Andrea Martin), who owns a travel agency, that she could apply what she learns in the course to Voula's business. Voula agrees, and she and Maria slyly convince Gus to agree as well. The women convince Gus that Voula is handling her travel business alone and everybody else is managing the dry-cleaning store. They make it seem that it is Gus's idea to let Toula help at the travel agency.Toula's happiness working at the travel agency catches Ian's attention. Ian was passing by the travel agency daily and notices Toula. One day Ian comes into the agency and gathers the courage to ask Toula out for dinner. Ian is an English teacher, while his entire family are lawyers.
On their date, Toula confesses to Ian that her family owns Dancing Zorba's, and Ian suddenly recognizes her; contrary to Toula's fear that he would lose interest in her, Ian reaffirms his fondness for her. They continue dating and fall in love.
Toula tells Ian that she has a big and loud family. She has 27 first cousins, and everybody pokes into each other's life all the time. Ian says that everyone has a weird family and says that his life up to this point was very boring.Knowing her family would not approve of her dating a non-Greek, Toula lies that she is taking a pottery class to see Ian. However, Toula's lie is exposed when a family friend sees Toula and Ian kissing in a parking lot.
Gus is furious that Ian did not ask his permission to date Toula, even though they are grown adults. Gus refuses to let them continue seeing each other because Ian is not Greek, but Toula and Ian continue dating anyway. Toula tells Maria that she loves Ian, and she understands.
Gus introduces Toula to single friends of his own, to no avail.
Ian introduces Toula to his parents and they love her as well.Ian proposes marriage and Toula accepts. Maria tells Gus that he must accept their marriage, but Gus remains upset because Ian is not a member of the Greek Orthodox Church. Toula wants to elope with Ian as she fears that her wedding will not be an occasion for joy. To get the family to accept him, Ian agrees to be baptized into the church. Nikki is Ian's Godmother.
The Portokalos family does finally accept him but constantly inserts themselves into the wedding planning, designing ugly bridesmaid's dresses and misspelling Ian's mother's name on their wedding invitations. Nick tells Ian that if he ever hurts Toula, he will kill Ian and make it look like an accident.
Ian is a vegetarian, while the whole Greek cuisine is based on meat. The wedding is set at the Greek church.
Nick tells Toula that he is inspired by her and will start taking night classes to learn design and art.Ian's quiet, conservative parents Rodney (Bruce Gray) & Harriet (Fiona Reid) meet the entire family during a loud and extravagant Greek family dinner and are overwhelmed by the experience, frustrating Gus. Toula worries about whether her father has accepted Ian.At the wedding reception, Gus gives a heartfelt speech focusing on how the differences in the newlyweds' backgrounds do not matter. He and Maria then surprise Toula and Ian with a house as a wedding gift.
As the two families dance together, Toula narrates that while her family is indeed loud, odd, and somewhat dramatic, she knows they love her and will always be there for her.Six years later, Toula and Ian leave their house to walk their daughter to Greek school. The house is then revealed to be right next door to Gus and Maria's house.
Storyline
Toula Portokalos is 30, Greek American, and works in her family's restaurant, Dancing Zorba's, in Chicago. All her father Gus wants is for her to get married to a nice Greek boy. But Toula is looking for more in life. Her mother convinces Gus to let her take some computer classes at college (making him think it's his idea). With those classes under her belt, she then takes over her aunt's travel agency (again making her father think it's his idea). She meets Ian Miller, a high school English teacher, WASP, and dreamboat she had made a fool of herself over at the restaurant; they date secretly for a while before her family finds out. Her father is livid over her dating a non-Greek. He has to learn to accept Ian; Ian has to learn to accept Toula's huge family, and Toula has to learn to accept herself. — Jon Reeves Toula Portokalos is a thirty-year-old single Greek-American woman, living with her parents and brother in a Chicago Greek community. After convincing her father to let her go to the university, she meets the non-Greek Ian Miller and they decide to get married. Her father does not accept the wedding of his daughter with a non-Greek man. — Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
