I’m afraid that, coming as hard as it does on the heels of the festival of stupidity that is the UK edition of Alone, the advent of Ultimate Wedding Planner on our screens forces me to renew my call for all broadcasters’ charters to be amended. From now on, all channels must include at least three shows every year showcasing and celebrating people’s real skills and genuine talents – rather than chucking them into situations in which they’re set up to fail. Hopefully this cross-platform Basic Competence series will keep us all from throwing ourselves at the nearest wall until we fall into the sweet relief of unconsciousness.
You can probably guess what Ultimate Wedding Planner is like. There are three judges; Fred Sirieix, best known for his soothingly charmant presence as maitre d’hotel in Channel 4’s First Dates; Sara Davies, founder of supply company Crafter’s Companion and Dragons’ Den dragon since 2019; and Raj Somaiya, the CEO of Silverfox Events, a company that specialises in organising high-end weddings. And, while it feels like there are 700 contestants, my notes assure me there are only eight. All of whom have been operating on the fringes of the wedding planning business but now want to break into the industry proper.
And what better way to do that than by being thrown together and given £10,000 and three days to fulfil an increasingly impossible brief. They’re each given one couple (who have already chosen and paid for the venue and other main struts of the day – the BBC money is to “supersize” things) per interminable episode. The series is a selectively edited six-week slog designed to make the contestants seem (I hope) so lacking in every conceivable area of existence that, by the halfway point of each 350-minute hour, it becomes a surprise that they are allowed to put on their own shoes unaided.
Each week, the participants are split into two teams. One is in charge of the design elements (essentially, where to put the tealights and checking that the signs pointing to the loos can be clearly understood by drunkards). The other team is in charge of the more ineffable “experience” part of the planned shindig (this generally means where and how the alcohol poisoning takes place).
I’m afraid I only got through the first three instalments of Ultimate Wedding Planner – I could only watch about 10 minutes of an episode before having to go for a long lie down. People say things like “I don’t think there is a rulebook!” (there is – it’s called the Book of Common Prayer. Get a copy, get a nice frock you can wear again, grab a passing vicar and get it all done in an afternoon. Adjust according to religion – or lack of – but not to taste. That’s the key). And “I love to overplan!” before glue-gunning fresh flowers on to burlap for a rustic theme. And “My dream is to arrive in a helicopter”. And “I run a micro wedding venue” (a converted van decorated with paintings of chickens in tutus). At that point I went to bed for an hour.
Anyway. The first couple are planespotters and have hired a hangar with Concorde in it as their venue. Because they want an “intimate” wedding with 60 guests in a “floral wonderland – like Concorde lost in a jungle”. The demands of clickbait television being what they are, of course, instead of stepping forward, slapping them and shouting “None of these words make sense together, you fools! Go home!”, Fred Sirieix turns to the contestants and says: “Make their dreams come true!” There may be a slightly sadistic streak in Sirieix, which, if it continues to emerge, will make the rest of the series unexpectedly palatable. But onward, for now, into roiling madness. The second couple want a “rustic family festival vibe” and their farm’s pygmy goat to be the ring bearer. I go to bed again and dream of the lot of them being barbecued for the wedding breakfast. The third couple want “a champagne wedding on a lager budget – not tack, but bling” and I wonder if they could make the target to hit any smaller.
There is the usual bickering among the contestants – the more able (this is a relative value) look down on the less able, the homesick cry in corners, some people have good ideas they can’t execute, some can execute anything they’re told to but have no initiative, and some you suspect just have “useless’” written through them like a stick of rock. Most of them (and the couples) are people you are wishing awful things will happen to – very early in the process.
It’s the usual addictive, meritless trash, in other words. Hate-love, enjoy-despise to your heart’s content. It won’t make any difference. Nobody cares. Nothing is good or real in the world any more. Go to bed. Get up. It’ll all be the same in the morning.
• Ultimate Wedding Planner is available on BBC iPlayer
