Hello...I’m your new WIFE
It was TV’s most cynical stunt — marrying couples who meet for the first time at the altar. So why — when last year’s weddings all ended in tears — are Caroline and Adam taking the ultimate plunge?
THE groom paces nervously, the violet floral arrangement in the lapel of his suit vying for prominence with the flush of his complexion. His two young nieces clutch poems they have written for the occasion and guests whisper with fevered anticipation.
But while the hallmarks of a traditional wedding are here, on closer inspection, all is not as it seems.
Six cameras hover over the registrar to record every movement, television production staff scurry in the background and smartphones have been confiscated to stop snippets of the ceremony leaking onto the internet.
When the bride finally arrives — 50 minutes late, dressed in a cloud of Vera Wang — she shows no sense of familiarity towards her future husband. Instead, she shakes his hand self-consciously and utters the following words: ‘Hi, I’m Caroline and I’m going to be your wife.’
Astonishingly, this is the first time that Caroline Knott and groom Adam Donoghue have met. And their wedding — to which the Mail has been invited — is being filmed for reality show Married At First Sight, the controversial Channel 4 programme that uses a panel of experts to match compatible contestants, before marrying them off within mere minutes of introduction.
The prospect of legally binding yourself to a complete stranger in front of the nation would lead most of us to recoil in horror.
The fact that all three couples from the first series of the programme, screened last year, have long since separated provides further proof — if any were needed — that this is no failsafe formula for lasting love.
Yet, incredibly, 3,500 singletons still volunteered for series two, the second episode of which airs tomorrow night.
Of these thousands of applicants, four couples are selected and the camera follows them from their wedding and honeymoon to the home laid on by producers.
There, they live for five weeks before deciding whether to continue as husband and wife — or separate.
Despite the fact that Channel 4 claims its programme is a ‘groundbreaking social experiment’ to see if science can help find couples find lasting love, one can only wonder why
anyone would take part in what critics claim is a cynically exploitative stunt.
I interview Adam and Caroline before and after the ceremony I attend to find out.
Both intelligent and immensely likeable, they don’t appear to hanker after five minutes of fame. More, they both claim, they are genuinely looking for ‘The One’.
Not that they are exactly shy, retiring types. Caroline, an attractive 28-yearold operations co-ordinator from South London with long, ginger hair and a curvaceous figure, admits that her friends think she’s mad.
But, she says, she loves ‘striking out’, and is determined to do the unexpected. She had been unattached for almost a year before applying for the show and, despite internet dating, failed to find Mr Right.
Then, while watching the first series, she decided that ‘if somebody could do a better job than me at choosing a man I should let them’.
Adam, a 34-year-old train manager from Bournemouth, seems less selfassured — at least when it comes to the dating game.
He describes himself as the opposite of a ‘player’ and has just one four-year relationship under his belt, which ended five years ago. He’s an obsessive about comic books and selfproclaimed geek with a flat full of toys who admits he ‘looks a cross between David Cameron and David Brent’.
BUT he’s also gripped by idealism. ‘I want someone I can support until we’re in our 80s on mobility scooters,’ he says. ‘I want to be the perfect husband who can be relied on for everything.’
His attempts to find a sweetheart via online dating also failed and, like Caroline, he was attracted to what both enthusiastically describe as the ‘science’ behind the programme.
‘It’s a guaranteed way of finding the perfect match,’ says Adam.
Of course, in reality, it is no such thing, but contestants are said to be carefully vetted.
A panel comprising a psychologist, a doctor of evolutionary anthropology, a sex and relationship therapist and a vicar assess couples using DNA testing to examine genetic compatibility and a psychometric test of more than 1,000 questions. In addition to this, contestants can’t have children already, debts, prior divorces or sexually transmitted diseases (for which they are screened by programme makers).
‘It was a tough process,’ says Caroline. ‘If you weren’t ready for it, you would be weeded out quickly, which made me feel positive.’
This positivity wasn’t unequivocally echoed among the pair’s nearest and dearest, however.
‘I had friends who expressed concern I was missing out on a “real” wedding,’ says Caroline, though she makes no mention of anybody expressing concern about the fact that no amount of psychometric testing can predict the one vital ingredient for love: chemistry.
Throughout the process, it’s clear that Caroline’s own parents — married for 35 years before her mother, Ann, an office manager, died of cancer when Caroline was 21 — are her inspiration. ‘A committed relationship is a wonderful thing,’ she says.
HER father, Martin, 58, an engineer who hadn’t heard of the programme, was, she insists, ‘really interested’ in its premise: ‘He said it was no worse than online dating.’ Although when you date a man from cyberspace, you don’t face divorce if it turns out he’s not up to scratch.
In contrast, Adam admits his closeknit family was apprehensive. He’s one of four siblings and his father, John, 62, who works for a railway company, and mother, Barbara, 62, a shop assistant, have been married 40 years.
‘They asked if I just wanted to get on television. They worried I’d get hurt. One friend said I was bloody nuts, but I’m quite eccentric, so it didn’t entirely surprise them when I told them I’d entered.’
It was six weeks before their wedding, which took place this summer, that Adam and Caroline were told they’d been ‘matched’.
Given only Christian names so that they can’t Google each other, they are allowed some input into their wedding — Caroline chose irises in her bouquet as they were her mother’s favourite flowers and Adam decided their first dance — although the day itself is choreographed by the programme’s production company.
I first speak to Adam four days before his wedding. Brimming with excitement, he lets slip that his ideal woman has dark brown hair, but adds hastily: ‘I’m trying not to imagine what Caroline looks like so I won’t be disappointed.’
The couple will share a hotel room on their wedding night. Is he expecting to make love to his new wife?
‘If we feel it’s the right thing to do, I’ll go for it,’ he says. ‘But I don’t need to do it to prove a point. Plenty of people don’t have sex on their wedding night because they’re too drunk or tired. It’s not a race.’
Arriving at their opulent London wedding venue, I’m greeted by enormous chandeliers hanging from every ceiling, fresh flowers galore and, of course, TV cameras everywhere.
It would make the most robust of brides feel overwhelmed but, as Caroline has her make-up applied professionally while surrounded by
champagne and three bridesmaids in a side room, she insists she ‘slept like an absolute log’ the night before.
Resplendent in a second-hand chiffon Vera Wang dress she bought from a budget allocated by the production company, she approaches the situation pragmatically. ‘Best case scenario, Adam is someone I’ll feel comfortable with,’ she says. ‘I don’t have a physical type. Being kind and funny is so much more important. A guy can be goodlooking, but unattractive because he’s a total idiot.’
Remarkably, considering the fact she is about to embark on what is traditionally a lifelong commitment, she is sanguine about the experiment ending in disaster. ‘There’s always a chance it won’t work out.
‘You have to ask yourself: “Am I OK with being divorced at 29?” The conclusion I came to was that the people who matter in my life aren’t going to care about that.’
I can’t help thinking back to what Adam told me earlier this week: ‘If it doesn’t work out, I will be gutted and wonder if there’s something wrong with me.’
It’s not only the bride and groom who are strangers, but also their respective family and friends. The atmosphere at the wedding is one of surreal curiosity, with 40 guests on both sides of the aisle trying to surreptitiously assess one other.
I’m sitting next to a family friend of Adam’s who insists the groom has, actually, always been a very sensible type and adds, diplomatically: ‘I wasn’t expecting to be doing this on a Sunday afternoon.’
When a clearly anxious Adam emerges, he proposes a ‘clammy high-five’ by way of introduction to Caroline’s family in the front row. As the minutes pass and his bride fails to materialise, he suggests we check the fire escapes.
But as I begin to fear that he has been ditched — Channel 4 insists it is perfectly within participants’ rights to change their mind right up to the last minute — Caroline finally arrives on her father’s arm.
She is delayed by filming issues, not cold feet, I’m told.
Side by side at last, her sunny, and slightly goofy, demeanour compliments Adam’s clumsy, selfdeprecating persona.
Her vows — I promise to honour and care for you and be your friend for as long as we both shall live — are succinct, albeit highly ambitious, considering the circumstances.
After exchanging white gold wedding bands, they kiss on the lips. ‘I told myself if we didn’t kiss at the altar, it probably wasn’t going anywhere, so I should go for it,’ Caroline tells me later.
Adam agrees: ‘Words can’t describe how beautiful she looked,’ he says. ‘We were signing up for a lifetime commitment and you’ve got to do that properly.’
In the congregation, guests are shedding tears of joy. I can’t help but feel they are swept away by the sense of occasion, as much as any conviction in the couple themselves. ‘I don’t even know her and I already like her,’ one friend of the groom gushes within minutes of Caroline’s arrival.
As the champagne is distributed, Adam’s father’s reservations seem to have dissipated. He admits his new daughter-in-law is ‘better’ than he imagined — by which he appears to mean she is more down-to-earth.
‘If she was too glamorous, it would be the wrong match,’ he says. ‘I don’t mean this disrespectfully, but she looks — how can I put this? — as if she has the same quirky humour as Adam.’
Caroline’s older sister, Paula, admits she thought the show sounded, at first, like a ‘car crash’. But if she has lingering concerns, she doesn’t show them: ‘It’s just one step on from a dating agency. And if you are married, then you have got to put commitment and effort into making it work from the off.’
It would be churlish to point out the holes in her argument, especially as she becomes emotional when wondering what their Scottish mother would have made of it: ‘She would have been very Glaswegian about it and asked Caroline why she was doing something so stupid.
‘And then she would have listened as Caroline put forward her case and would have been rooting for her.’
AFTER the duck terrine wedding breakfast, Adam tackles the ‘tricky’ speech he’d written before he knew whom he was marrying.
It begins with a mischievous ‘When I first met Caroline . . .’ which is greeted with rapturous laughter. ‘I wanted to be funny, but respectful as well,’ he says.
He denies getting a father-in-law pep talk from Martin, but understands why Caroline describes her dad as ‘jittery’ before the ceremony. ‘He’s giving away his pride and joy to a complete stranger. You would feel a bit nervous,’ he adds.
Caroline, for her part, appears to immediately hit it off with her in-laws: ‘I was worried Adam’s family wouldn’t be as on-board with the wedding as mine, but all they wanted to do was welcome me into the family.’
The first dance is Frank Sinatra’s aptly entitled Strangers In The Night. As the disco gets under way, fathers of the bride and groom drink together and, as Caroline recalls, ‘pretty much everyone was on the dancefloor’.
They leave at 11pm, with the episode closing as they collapse onto their hotel’s double bed. So do they share it?
‘Well, I didn’t make him sleep in the bath,’ says Caroline, declining to divulge exactly how intimate they became. ‘The wedding night is something that should stay between husband and wife.’
Waking up next to a stranger the next morning could have brought them crashing down to earth. But it seems romance was still in the air.
‘It should have been awkward, but I was just excited to get to know Adam,’ says Caroline. ‘As soon as I saw him, I felt relief. He looked so kind and I knew I was in good hands.’
Whether they will feel the same about each other after a month, let alone a lifetime, very much remains to be seen.
MARRIED At First Sight is on Channel 4 tomorrow at 9pm.