The show that leaves us OMG-ing to our very core and wondering if such, ahem, colourfully-minded people actually exist in the real world is thankfully back on our screens. Giving a fiancé £12,000 to organise a wedding in three weeks. What could possibly go wrong? But what really goes on behind-the-scenes?
It is all set up? Do the couples message each other in secret? Are the fiancés really that dim? Has anyone ever wanted to punch their dearly-beloved in the face with their bouquet? And why on earth would anyone agree to be on the show unless they were hideously drunk? heat finds out…
Why don’t they agree on a concept before they go on Don’t Tell The Bride? Duh
The brides genuinely don’t know what’s going on. When Bianca Ledner went on the show in July 2015 she was pregnant. She was the ‘lucky’ lady about to get royally DDTB-ed by her fiancé Adam Ledner from Cwmbran in Wales. They’d only met 18 months before going on the show on Tinder (good start) and viewers called it the ‘worst wedding ever’.
The televisual assault included buying his bride-to-be a £140 ‘cheap bit of tat off the internet’ dress and filling a warehouse with sand for a Thai-style full-moon party. He then charmed his heavily-pregnant bride by getting married on a plane from Bristol Airport costing a whopping £5,000. Her dad didn’t give her away as she shuffled up the ‘aisle’ and she didn’t get to say vows. Sobbing, she eloquently summed up her big day: ‘proper s***’.
Bianca told heat Adam had no idea what kind of wedding she’d like, because neither did she… “We'd only been engaged for three months, so I wasn’t even thinking about weddings. I genuinely didn’t know anything about his ideas. We had to sign contracts and if we discussed anything between us we’d have had to give the money back, which was quite scary. We had to hand in our phones and de-activate all of our social media and were given a little brick phone instead.”
Another couple who clearly had differing views when it came their wedding was Luke Jarvis and Jaydene Coomber.
Big kid Luke previously had everything done by his mum, gran and Jaydene – so organising a wedding was bound to be interesting… He started off with the priorities: a stag party in Spain blowing over £2,000. On the other hand, Jaydene’s hen consisted of takeaway pizza and a cheap night at the local pub. Jaydene had her heart set on a church wedding where her grandmother got married, but Luke wanted a roller hockey theme for the big day with a fish and chip truck, and candyfloss. Anyone say annulment?
It could have worked out perfectly for Jaydene, if only her other half had used his lugholes. She tells heat, “I’d told him before what my ideal wedding would be like, but he hadn’t listened! It was difficult to try and get a message across because there were cameras always there.”
What’s it like actually filming Don’t Tell The Bride?
Can they really be bridezillas off camera? No chance. Bianca says, “I thought it was going to be really relaxed and easy, and I wouldn't get wrapped up in it, but I was really emotionally involved, you just can’t help it. At one point I thought, ‘Oh my god, what am I doing?’. I hadn’t seen Adam for three weeks and I was pregnant - the hormones definitely didn’t help. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I didn’t think it was going to be as real! It’s pretty much as it happened and the reactions are genuine.”
Jaydene sounds like she had a much easier ride. She says, “I think Luke had the stress of everything because I didn’t know anything and I’m quite a laid back person anyway. I was quite happy to let him do it and get on with it. The production team were very strict and there were cameras around quite a lot. You don’t get any say about what is put in the show.”
So what happens after Don’t Tell The Bride?
They all sailed off into the sunset, didn’t they? Bianca says: “There was quite a bit of abuse on social media after. Adam was getting real s**t and I got quite a lot of abuse off the back of an article that was written about me that was wrong. People were leaving comments saying ‘she didn't want tacky but she’s wearing a white dress and she’s pregnant’, and body shaming. You don’t realise how hardcore it is.”
Thanks to DTTB, Jaydene got a swanky honeymoon too. She says, “We finished filming in March and went to America for three weeks in October. Because we’d had our wedding paid for, it meant that we could have a nicer honeymoon.” They even had a premiere of sorts to watch their show. “We went to the local pub and they threw a big party and put a big screen up. It was so cringey watching yourself on TV. Luke got a bit of bashing on Twitter though.
Couple Greg and Julia were lined up to do the show, but ended up changing their minds at the last minute. Julia says, “When Greg and I sat down to discuss everything it all became very real and we decided we didn’t want to go ahead. We realised we were going to end up with a wedding day we didn’t want. I was worried about ending up in a horrific dress and then looking back at the photos in years to come, cringing. And as we got planning, we soon realised 12,000 doesn’t get you very far!”
This article originally appeared in heat magazine issue 948 (12 - 18 August)