Why the British Reality Show 'Don’t Tell the Bride' Is the Most Important Thing on Television

To understand Don't Tell the Bride is to understand life. To understand Don't Tell the Bride is to understand humanity. You're not listening to me: Don't Tell the Bride is the most important show on television. A cultural touchstone we should all have a single grave finger on. Don't Tell the Bride is everything.

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CHAPTER I: LIFE

The format of Don't Tell the Bride is simple: grooms are given £12,000 [$17,000] and three weeks to plan a wedding, and the brides aren't allowed to have any input at all. The brides aren't allowed to even talk to their grooms, which is where much of the stress comes from: the detachment, the phantom limb syndrome of the gap left by their lover, that curious situation where a couple who started a text message thread when they met 18 months ago and only punctuated it to have sex and propose are cut off entirely from one another, an eerie radio silence that leads them to go full mad, to sob hysterically at £1,800 [$2,750] ballgowns or furnish a summer wedding marquee with plastic party shop plates, or think that making someone jump out of an airplane in full bridal makeup and a gown is an in any way good idea for a wedding. And then they meet, and marry, and cry again, and generally admit that, through it all, that in the end they had the greatest day of their lives. That love is real, and they have it in their hearts.

You would think that such a simple format would lead to a multitude plays upon it, a seed with a thousand plants. You'd be absolutely fucking wrong. Don't Tell the Bride is the same, time after time after time, a Groundhog Day if Groundhog Day had a rigid faced mother-in-law saying "If he breaks my princess's heart I shall kill him." If Groundhog Day had a scene where Bill Murray had to go and speak to Andie MacDowell's grunts-for-words dad while he drinks a single cup of tea and loops a single thumb into the hook of his jeans while his huge belly hangs out over and above it, and asks him if he would walk his daughter down the aisle even if her stepdad, Steve, was there as well, and Andie MacDowell's dad will choke and go: "I'd be proudest dad in [the] world."

Here is everything that happens in every episode of Don't Tell the Bride, without fail:

— The Bride is always named Becky or Ellie so the purposes of this article will hereby be referred to as 'Becky-Ellie' and the groom is literally always called James so—

— So right Becky-Ellie and James will sit on a sofa next to each other, hands on their thighs or knees, backs rigid, and—in a sped-up shutter effect added in post—will look at each other cheekily then back to the camera again, and then there will be a quick shot of James pulling a goofy face close-up into the camera and Becky-Ellie will push him out of the way to do her hair in the camera (the camera here signifying a mirror, which in the Don't Tell the Bride universe, all brides are obsessed with, women can only be Narcissuses in DTTB, men only fools), and this will signify that they are 'DiL' or Deeply In Love.

— But then the music will change a half-tone and then a piano will come in and the narrator will go "but they didn't always get along" and then Becky-Ellie will relate a fun story about how she didn't fancy him at first but he won her over with a rote romantic gesture (which is quite frequently 'He bought me some food when I was at work,' which in my eyes shows that many people's standards for romance is almost unacceptably low, like: he bought you a muffin when you were on break from Topshop once, love yourself) and/or cry while looking out over a fence at the sunset about how "they had some bad times a while back" which always—I am talking 100 percent of the time—means the groom cheated on her while DJing at a drum 'n' bass night, but the truth will always remain unsaid, they will never actually admit it.

— Becky-Ellie will have a quirky but essential personality flaw ("I like hats, I never go anywhere without a hat"; "I'm afraid of dogs, heights, and deep water"; "I don't know the alphabet") that will be central to the theme of her dream and/or crucial to her idea of a nightmare wedding but will be entirely, entirely ignored by the groom in question to the point that the wedding will involve a ceremonial hat burning ("I just thought it would be fun to burn hats!"), or it will be a dog-themed bungee jumping sea wedding ("How much to chuck a Labrador off a bridge? $500? Can you do two-fifty, only we're on a bit of a budget."), or she will have to recite her vows letter-by-letter, adhering always to the rules of the alphabet.

— Becky-Ellie will have always dreamed of a church wedding ("I'm a girly-girl so I've always dreamed of a church wedding," she will say, unless she is not a girly-girl, at which point she will say, "I'm not a girly-girl but I've always dreamed of a church wedding") and there is a direct inverse correlation between how much she wants a church wedding to how much James wants to do something mad like get married inside a live whale, as demonstrated below in Figure A:

— The first thing James will do after an emotional goodbye with his bride-to-be is open a can of lager with his best man and the best man will just solemnly say the words "bachelor party."

— Becky-Ellie's sister will not trust James and will intimate that fact by repeatedly asking her "But do you trust him to get it right?", asking her until the wind erodes the cliffs into the sea, until nothing but sand blows over this scorched earth, and when dog-sized cockroaches are the main predators on the single blasted continent eclipsing the globe, Becky-Ellie's sister will be there, crawling through the remains, going: "But do you trust him enough to get that right?"

— James and his best man will look at a wedding dress in the wedding dress shop as though they have never seen a wedding dress before, or even a dress, or other people, so baffled as though they have just been given birth to, that they have just crawled—gloopy, and slick, fresh from the uterus—on the floor and into a wedding dress shop, and picked literally one wedding dress up by the lace and say "I don't know what I'm looking at," and the best man will have to put the dress on as a joke, or a friendly shop girl in the vague shape of Becky-Ellie will put the dress on to be helpful, and James will pause and notice that he can see a peek of cleavage and so will say: "I like that."

— An entire cacophony of grim-faced hens will be furious that they have to pay for drinks on the bachelorette party, as if anyone has ever gone on a bachelorette party and had the drinks provided for them gratis, I mean what kind of world do you live in.

— Becky-Ellie will not like the dress and will either cry until someone makes a very minor alteration to the dress (after a mom or furious sister will phone James—who is always either in traffic or just stood near a wall—and tell him that she hates the dress and everything has to change, and he will say he only has $92 left in the budget can she just put a veil on, and the mom/furious sister will concede that well, we'll try it with a veil on) and then she will decide it is her dream dress (Becky-Ellie, without a veil on: "I hate it. I'm not even sure I want to get married anymore." Becky-Ellie, putting a veil on: "He does know me.") or she will pretend she likes the dress more than the dress she actually chose and go "It wasn't what I was expecting but I love it" because it's just easier.

— James will have neglected to arrange a sufficient capacity vehicle to take the entire bridal party to the wedding venue and the mom will start crying in a way that suggests she has never heard of just booking a minicab.

— Becky-Ellie's dad will say forebodingly "I'm very difficult to please" and then turn out to be exceptionally easy to please, like I am talking literally Becky-Ellie's dad (Roy) going into a mostly empty marquee and seeing that James has put centerpieces on the table that are just jam jars with a candle in them and going "He's done good… he's done good," while crying a single tear and going puce (soundtrack: Biffy Clyro – "Many of Horror")

— They will get married, because true jeopardy is an illusion.

These are the things that will happen. Without fail, without disambiguation. These are the things that will happen.

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CHAPTER II: HUMANITY

Have you ever sat and wondered what kind of person you are: where you fit in in life, how your particular human jigsaw puzzle slots into the wider whole? Don't. Stop that. Watch an episode of Don't Tell the Bride instead. Watch an episode of Don't Tell the Bride and ascertain how you would react to the particular stresses and tasks of planning a wedding in three weeks or having a mystery wedding done to you in three weeks. That will tell you who you are. Example: If you are a man, you are one of six potential humans:

i. Men who are given £12,000 and immediately go abroad with it;

ii. Men who think flip-flops are acceptable outerwear;

iii. Men so incapable—so thrown into life at the very start of Don't Tell the Bride and snatched back into the warm womb at the end of it, the kind of men who say something like "I can't even organize a cup of coffee" as though it is some source of pride—men so incapable that they are not even able to phone a bridal shop and ask "do you do dresses?" without a half warm up and a steadying Budweiser.

iv. Best Man who does not understand why you're marrying her anyway.

v. Best Man who is capable of talking to someone over speakerphone and is therefore essential.

vi. Groom who has a lucrative side hustle in that sort of warm, begrudging kind of love that men are so good at, that unromantic well-I-guess-life-would-be-shit-without-you thing, that makes them turn around in a suit they had to take a financial hit on just to get her her dream dress and smile proudly in as she walks down the aisle, the kind of love that makes them snarl at their best man if they ever badmouth her again, the kind of love they only know how to truly express by doing something illogical, love got them so confused they tattoo her name initials on his asscheek, love got them so they think a Simon Cowell-lookalike saying "fabulous" a lot is legitimate wedding entertainment.

And if you are a woman you are either:

i. A mom who cares far too much about her daughter's wedding, so much that it suggests a void in her heart, an absence of something that can't ever be filled, a mum jumping up and yelping at the exact moment her daughter gets married despite it defying protocol and etiquette, a mom who cries at a yellow cake because she never envisioned the icing being that color.

ii. A mom who is quite visibly ill.

iii. A bride who has a very set vision of her Big Day and so you sort of wonder why exactly, if her Big Day was so important to her and every touch of it must be Just So, you sort of wonder why then she agreed to go on this show and get married so absurdly in the first place, you wonder why she would put the one idea she is truly in love with into the hands of an idiot who only half knows her, a bride who you sincerely get the impression only cares about her wedding and her life after the wedding, her entire being is focussed on wearing a white dress once in front of people, very close to her family, this bride, weirdly so, her bridesmaid is her sister because she never made any friends, obsessed with napkins, this woman, weird.

iv. Bride who had a clear idea but it didn't happen for the wedding so oh well.

v. Bride who loves her husband-to-be's incompetence because it is part of who he is, endures the shit hen party and the ugly dresses and the mad idea to have a wedding on top of a battleship with a kind of sick fondness because That's Just What He's Like And That's Why I Love Him. That she loves him despite him being so visibly a man who is bad at things, neither a fixer upper or a perfect example of humanity, just a yin to her yang, a half that makes her whole, someone she sees lying slumped on the sofa semi-conscious in front of Sky Sports and thinks: home;

These are the only things you can be. You are only who you would be on Don't Tell the Bride. Nobody is anyone else. We all pretend we are complex and delicate and contain multitudes, all of us special like a snowflake, unique and fleeting, but no: deep down we are all named Sandra and do not want roses at our wedding, we absolutely do not want them, Sean, for some inexplicable reason roses would absolutely ruin our day. That is who we all are.

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CHAPTER III: DEATH

For some reason there is a recurring theme in Don't Tell the Bride where if someone close to the groom (a mom, a muscular and inspiring uncle) has died in the last eight to five years, then they will be honored wholesale by the wedding arranged in their absence. Not, like, 'we set a place for them at the table': no. Like: an entire wedding arranged around their fondness for bodybuilding, their favorite play, and their photo printed and iced onto the cake. And the bride comes in and looks around and realizes the wedding is absolutely not about her at all and goes: Oh, it's… oh, okay. Yeah, it's nice to have your uncle here on your big day. And then you the viewer realize: What if you die, right now? What if you die right now (lightning, a hundred bullets, foolish bet about how much licorice you can eat) and a young relative is inspired by you, they are only 16 now, but in five to eight years they are ready to tie the knot, and this is your lasting legacy: not a book, not a film, not a Wikipedia page, or a thousand mourners, but instead a sweating stepfather, his tie loosening in the sweltering heat of a hired marquee, raising a glass to you and what you might have been. Looking up at the abyss and fondly recounting how much you will be enjoying this, how much you would be smiling. That's the real hell of death, right there.

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CHAPTER IV: LOVE, CLOSURE

But then Don't Tell the Bride is, ultimately, about love, and about how love is real and good and to be treasured, and about how love is a rare and fleeting thing, and if you find it, grasp it—grasp it hard, lock your hands around it, crush the butterfly of love in your vice-like death grip, and take its crushed remains to BBC Three, and say, "BBC Three," and say, "I have a kooky idea for a wedding," and say, "please give me £12,000 and send a camera crew to follow me through a compacted period of extreme stress while I plan it," and BBC Three will say, "We either do or don't exist any more," BBC Three looking around and saying, "it's a very confusing time for us right now, we keep getting Reggie Yates to do things," but BBC Three relenting and saying "okay" and then something new is born: from the ashes of your love, through the hyperstress of marriage, a baby. A tightly edited, 56-minute long docuseries baby.

But fundamentally it is sort of reiterating the most outmoded and traditional of cultural traditions (marriage) and then sort of adding a mid-vow bungee jump to it and shaping that into something new, classic with a modern twist, and I don't think I hate that. We're quite cynical, as a generation, about love—we keep saying things like "ghosted" and "body count" and "bae" and "texts from your ex" and "side piece" and "fuckboi" and "u know she a hoe when" and "did you smash"; we stopped doing Facebook relationship statuses because it's too messy when you split, instead agonizing over which emoji to put next to the name of our main lay on our phones—and so in a way the whole marriage thing is quite cute: the absurd idea that we can commit to another human for the rest of our knucklehead lives, the wacky thinking behind a groom proving he isn't useless by swiftly arranging something important. That's the real warm heart beating at the core of Don't Tell the Bride: a sort of uncorny, honest appraisal of modern commitment, only with a half-sassy narrator and a soundtrack that is basically 'just the first xx album.'

Love isn't hearts and flowers and teddybears: it's hard-faced grandmas furious about a subpar bachelorette party because they want what's best for their granddaughters. Love isn't Michelin-starred meals and haute cuisine: it's getting a caterer to agree to feed 60 of your friends and family for $700 below quote because you got on your knees and begged them. Love isn't the conceptual gooey romanticism of Hallmark Valentine's cards: it's a bride looking at a helicopter on her wedding day and plainly saying "I'm not fucking getting in that." Don't Tell the Bride captures it all. Anyway: good show imo.

Follow Joel Golby on Twitter.