Don’t Tell The Bride 2015: Five cringeworthy moments to celebrate the new series

This is why you never let the groom plan an entire wedding
No pressure: What happens when the groom has to plan the entire wedding?
BBC
Ben Travis24 June 2015

After spending years as a BBC Three favourite, reality series Don’t Tell The Bridge is making the big leap up to BBC One this week.

In some ways it’s a wonder it’s taken this long for the show to get a bigger push – it’s ripe with juicy car-crash drama and hide-behind-the-sofa cringeworthy moments that make for brilliant TV.

The show offers couples hoping to tie the knot a budget of £14,000 (formerly £12,000) to plan the perfect wedding – with a catch. The groom has to organise everything within the three weeks running up to the big day, and is allowed no contact at all with his bride-to-be. Yes – he has to pick the dress, the venue, organise the hen do, sort the catering, the cake... the list goes on.

Here are a few moments from the show to make you recoil in horror – and wonder why you’d ever trust the groom to be in control of an entire wedding.

1) The worst dress possible

Picking the dress is always one of the most difficult tasks for the groom - with thousands of choices, the chances of actually picking something akin to the one that the bride had pictured in her head are slim-to-none. Take this instance, where the main thing Alex doesn’t want is a pure white, satin dress. Guess which shade and material her partner Luke picked?

2) A detour to Thorpe Park

Tenuous, elaborate romantic gestures are part and parcel of Don’t Tell The Bride. Oh, you met in a kebab queue on a night out? Why not get them to do the catering, or even have the whole wedding in the takeaway? As daft as these choices often are, the bride often sees the sweet and funny side of what their partner has attempted (though often not succeeded) to pleasantly surprise her with. But Steven misjudges what his bride-to-be Kayleigh wants from her special day – a detour to Thorpe Park where she’s expected to ride a rollercoaster in her wedding dress does not go down well.

3) Botching the budgeting

Not only is the groom made to organise everything, but the entire wedding has to come in at under £12,000. When Luke blows his budget too early, he asks the bridesmaids to contribute to the costs of their dresses, which they initially agree to, without realising that he needs a quite costly sum of £80 from each of them – money that a lot of them simply don’t have.

4) Unconventional wedding footwear

With the groom in charge, there’s a choice to be made – make compromises on a wedding with both bride and groom’s interests at hearts, or just go and do whatever the hell you want? Stoke City fan Levi opted for the latter, and decided to have the wedding at his beloved home ground. Thankfully his bride Jade was happy to go along for the ride – even though she had to wear football boots on the pitch.

Best TV dramas 2015 - in pictures

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5) The worst idea any groom has ever, ever had

If you thought asking the bride to go on a rollercoaster in her dress or to get married on a football pitch was dodgy territory, it’s still not a patch on the worst idea a groom on Don’t Tell The Bride has ever had. Seeing as they met at the local leisure centre, Ian decides he wants to marry Hayley there. In the swimming pool. In her dress and make-up. It’s all a surprise of course, so Hayley gets all glammed up, turns up at the underwhelming venue, and discovers that she’ll have to wade into the pool for the ceremony. Needless to say, she’s not at all impressed.

BBC One, 8pm

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