One of the biggest questions about Married At First Sight concerns how the weddings are set up and who pays for them. Since 2014, the MAFS experts have matched dozens of couples based on their personalities, goals, ambitions, hobbies, and more. Duos who agree to be married to a complete stranger first meet at the altar. After Lifetime’s eight-week experiment, which shows the couples enjoying their honeymoon and first weeks as newlyweds, each MAFS season ends with Decision Day, where each couple must decide whether they will remain married or get a divorce. While only some MAFS couples are still married in 2023, the experiment continues to be a hit show.
Although each MAFS episode is interesting and drama-filled, the best are Wedding Day and Decision Day. This still applies to the ongoing MAFS season 17, with new couples embarking on the MAFS journey. With so much going into a standard wedding (and costs usually upward of thousands of dollars), MAFS viewers have long wondered who pays for each wedding. Does Lifetime cover their special day, or do the duos cover costs with their wallets?
Both MAFS Cast Members And Production Pay For The Wedding
According to multiple sources, it’s a little bit of both, although MAFS covers most costs. MAFS season 13’s Johnny Lam, for example, told The List in 2021 that he agreed to appear on the show because the network would pay for his wedding. Johnny, who married (and eventually divorced) Bao Huong Hoang, explained that Lifetime’s monetary contribution helps “appeal to the practical, logical side of you” and entices participants to go through the experiment. Besides the wedding itself, each season of MAFS also has a specific budget for attire, rings, bachelor and bachelorette parties, and each duo’s honeymoon, although that doesn’t mean that the participants receive everything for free.
MAFS Cast Members Are Not Paid
While most participants featured on the American version of MAFS haven’t gone into the series’ financial details aside from Johnny, Clark Sherwood from MAFS UK season 2 revealed to Cosmopolitan UK, “There’s no financial gain from going on the show. There’s the budget for things – her wedding dress, a small budget for the suits. There’s some money for hen-do and stag-dos [bachelorette and bachelor parties], but it was mainly out of my pocket.” This slightly differs from MAFS in the United States, where Women’s Health stated that each couple’s honeymoon trip is all-inclusive, with the catch being that they have no say in where they travel. In addition, participants on MAFS receive a stipend for appearing on the show but are not personally financially compensated beyond that.
MAFS is known for the dramatics and conflicts that arise from arranged marriages. While it costs some money to appear on MAFS, Lifetime is nice enough to cover most expenses, including the wedding, where they meet each other for the first time. Since most marriages on the show end in divorce, it’s a comfort at least that contestants spend little money out of pocket to get hitched on Married At First Sight.
