While they may not always end in Happily Ever After, these wedding reality shows are guaranteed to keep you entertained in the run up to your big day. They might also make you feel happier about your own wedding plans when you see what a disaster these can be by comparison.
Here are the best wedding reality TV shows we love to watch:
– Love is Blind
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The recently released Netflix series follows a few single people as they enter the ‘experiment.’ In 10 days, they date a host of people from within ‘pods’ that only let them hear each others voices. By the end of the 10 days, six couples came out engaged without ever having seen each other. This might seem wild enough on it’s own but the series goes even further. The couples then move in together and meet each others families before walking down the aisle to be asked whether “love is truly blind” and they commit to the partner they have known for about a month. As expected, the drama is high as the couples find out who the other person really is.
-Married at First Sight
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Married at First Sight has been around since 2014 and is still going strong on TLC. The premise of the show is that couples are chosen and paired up and meet for the first time at the end of the aisle. After getting married, the couple are filmed settling into their new life and after six to eight weeks, they decide whether to stay married or get divorced. Despite being criticised for being a westernised version of arranged marriage for entertainment purposes, it is addictive and keeps you hooked trying to guess who will make it.
– The Wedding Bashers
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Wedding Bashers combines the voting fun of Idols with the high stakes pressure of a wedding. Four wedding experts go to different couples weddings and judge them on the entire event. They vote on the weddings, with their vote counting 50% with the South African audience voting from home. If you’re in the middle of planning your wedding, rewatching the first two seasons might be a great way to pick up some ideas, or realise what not to do.
-Our Perfect Wedding
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Another South African wedding show, Our Perfect Wedding airs on Mzansi Magic and follows a couple planning their “perfect wedding” as they check off the items on their wish list. It’s a simple show that follows all the drama going into planning a wedding, with the couple declaring at the end whether or not their wedding was truly perfect. On top of being entertaining, watching other couples go through the entire wedding process might help you realise that your wedding will always have some stumbling blocks but in the end can still be perfect.
-Extreme Engagement
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Unlike the others, this show doesn’t hop straight into marriage. An engaged couple travels the world to experience marriage customs from a variety of cultures. The main goal is to see whether these extremely differing styles of marriage will bring out the best or the worst in their relationship. While it has been criticised for its problematic depictions of other cultures, it is interesting to witness the ways marriage is different all over the world. It might just give you a little time to think what marriage means for you.
– Kom ons trou, nou! (Let’s get married, now!)
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Although it’s in Afrikaans, this show has subtitles so you can follow on this wild ride. In every episode, a woman who is tired of waiting for her partner to propose secretly plans their wedding and then proposes to them in front of all their surprised guests. There really isn’t much to learn from this series, since you’ve already got the proposal and are planning the wedding but it’s pure reality TV entertainment.
Feature image: Instagram / Love is Blind
