Is Love Is Blind scripted? Plus are the marriages on Netflix dating show real or fake?

To celebrate its five year anniversary, the latest season will debut on Netflix on Friday February 14 - which is, of course, the most romantic day of the year - Valentine’s Day.

Viewers are excitedly waiting to meet the season 8 pod squad, and find out who will get engaged sight unseen after forming a bond through a wall - and then who will make it through to their wedding day.

The show has seen some truly jaw-dropping moments over the previous seven series; couple break-ups, couple make-ups, dramatic arguements and shocking one-liners. Who can forget when season seven’s Laura Dadisman ended her engagement to ex-fiancé Jeramey Lutinski after finding out he’d been with his other pod connection Sarah Ann Bick instead of her in the early hours of the morning and told him to “go kick rocks with open-toed f***ing shoes”? Or when Jessica Vestal gave Jimmy Presnell a brutal speech in season six when he broke-up with her. “When you see and realize what you missed out on, you are going to choke,” she told him, adding “You are going to need your EpiPen to open up your airways because you are going to be in disbelief of what you missed out on.”?

It’s intense scenes like this which have led viewers to question, ‘does anyone really talk like that?’ and therefore ‘is Love Is Blind scripted?’. Plus, for the couples who make it down the aisle and say ‘I do’, are they then married for real? Here’s all you need to know.

Is Love Is Blind scripted?

No, Love Is Blind isn’t scripted. All the conversations you hear between the participants are 100% real and authentic, and all the connections and subsequent engagements are also real and chosen by the participants themselves.

Series creator series creator Chris Coelen said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that the show is so real they were even worried no one would get engaged during season one. “As a producer I was kind of nervous like, is anybody actually gonna get engaged?. ‘Is anyone going to make it to the altar?”, he told the publication.

He added: “We had actually more success on this show than we were even able to document . . . In the end, we actually had more couples get engaged than we were able to follow. . . We only have so much time to tell a story, but there are lots of interesting stories.”

Viewers saw evidence of this in season seven when Leo Braudy and Brittany Wisniewski discuss either going to Mexico, which is where the producers send the couples on their honeymoon, or taking a trip of their own. There was then a notice from the producers which confirmed the couple’s story had not been filmed, but that they had decided not to continue their relationship.

There are also clues throughout the series that suggest certain scenes have been re-shot, or conversations have been encouraged by producers. In season one, for example, Jessica Batten is seen holding two different types of wine glass, suppposedly during the same conversation with her intended Mark Cuevas.

Another season one participant, Kenny Barnes, also took to Instagram after the season aired back in 2020, to reveal that he and Kelly Chase, who he said ‘I don’t’ to at the altar, agreed weeks prior to their wedding day not to get married. He also said the show had been edited in a certain way and that what he had said was taken out of context. “For the record, the clip of me saying ‘she’s the woman I’m supposed to be with’ was recorded in response to a hypothetical question asked/recorded weeks prior to this day. Content, or lack thereof, reduces context,” he said.

Are the Love Is Blind marriages real?

Yes, the Love Is Blind marriages are real. Coelen previously told Bustle: “If they choose to get married, yes, it’s a legally binding marriage.”

Former contestant Lauren Speed, who wedded husband Cameron Hamilton in season one, spoke to Refinery 29 and said: “We definitely did [get married]. That’s the part that was so scary for me. This is a real legally binding marriage. This is not for TV, this is our life.”

There are 10 Love Is Blind couples who are still together after getting married on LIB US and also 2 couples who are still married after meeting on LIB UK.