After a poor take, director Herbert Ross reprimanded Dolly Parton and asked her if she could act. She replied "No, but it's your job to make me look like I can!"

The cemetery scene was filmed in one take.

Sally Field and Shirley MacLaine said in an interview that director Herbert Ross was very difficult to work with, telling the main lead actresses they couldn't act, and singling out Julia Roberts in particular, to the point that she would be left in tears.

Herbert Ross had lost his first wife Nora Kaye in 1987, only two years before the film's release. His harsh treatment of the actors led Shirley MacLaine to tell him that he'd been behaving badly since Nora's death, and it wasn't respectful to her or to them.

Dolly Parton and Daryl Hannah studied hair stylists so their hair styling scenes would look authentic -- a particular necessity in the first beauty shop scene, during the course of which Parton styles Julia Roberts' hair for her wedding.

Continuity

When Sammy makes Annelle a cherry Coke, the glass changes after he pours the Coke, but before he throws the cherry into it. The level of liquid also momentarily drops.

After giving out tomatoes in Truvy's salon, Ouiser takes her hat off and burps. The scene cuts to Clairee laughing. Behind Clairee, you can see Ouiser in the mirror with her hat still on.

When Truvy is preparing Shelby's hair for her wedding, she takes out the same rollers three times.

In the first scene of the movie, Sally Field's character has an ice cube put inside her blouse as a prank from one of her kids. The ice cube is seen falling almost instantly but Sally Field's character asks Julia Roberts' character to help her with the ice cube in her blouse.

When Ouiser and Owen arrive at the Easter Egg Hunt at the end of the movie, Ouiser is wearing cream color high heel shoes. At the very end when everyone is waving and following the vehicle backing out of the park to take Annelle to the hospital, Ouiser is wearing brown socks with white lace and grungy looking tennis shoes.



Factual errors

Clairee suggested that Anne Boleyn had 11 fingers. This is not true. It would have been viewed as a sign of witchcraft.



Revealing mistakes

When Sally Field pins a corsage on Julia Roberts after the wedding, they are almost the same height, but Julia Roberts is almost 6 inches taller than Sally Field. No shoes could make them the same height. Then, the next shot has them walking to the door together and now the difference in height appears correct.

On the day of the wedding, when Jackson sneaks into Shelby's bedroom through the window, Shelby's bedroom is located on the second floor so he couldn't have accessed the window. Knowing this, in the beginning Shelby walks down the stairs twice from her bedroom prior to the wedding that day, once to ask M'Lynn about her nail polish and second to go over to Truvy's for their hair appointments.



Miscellaneous

When Spud uses the socket wrench, the ratchet sound is heard when he first moves it. If he was turning the bolt in the right direction the ratcheting would have been heard when he moves it backwards.

Twenty six minutes into the movie, M'Lynn tells the women that the doctor said "children aren't possible" for Shelby. Yet 65 minutes in, when the ladies find out Shelby is pregnant, Truvy exclaims "and the doctors said Shelby couldn't have children!" and Annelle says "yeah what do they know, I guess she showed them!" M'Lynn replies in a corrective tone "the doctors said she SHOULDN'T have children, there's a big difference". Well, M'Lynn is the one who said "not possible" about the baby to these ladies earlier in the movie, so she shouldn't be snotty and act like they're stupid when they get excited about the pregnancy. She changed her statement from "not possible" to "shouldn't do it".



Audio/visual unsynchronized

At the beauty parlor, we see Ouiser sit down hard on a bag of fresh tomatoes. We hear them burst. But when she reaches under to grab the bag, they are undamaged.



Character error

The movie takes place in the fictional "Chinquapin Parish" in the state of Louisiana. Several times characters refer to the parish as "the county" and even "Chinquapin County." Louisiana has no counties, only parishes.