The participants might change, and the drama gets more and more wild every season, but Married At First Sight (MAFS) typically follows the same format every year. Strangers meet at the aisle, they complete relationship-building tasks, they attend dinner parties and commitment ceremonies, and the whole thing is very familiar.
With this year’s season of the long-running social experiment underway, PEDESTRIAN.TV interviewed 2025 bride Carina Mirabile on our brand new reality TV podcast Villain Edit about some of the behind-the-scenes secrets viewers might not know about.
From how the audition process works to what it’s really like attending a dinner party, here are some of your burning questions about the reality show answered.
The MAFS audition process is actually very thorough
While you might question how some of the participants were approved to take part in the experiment, it turns out they each went through a very extensive audition process.
“The audition process is very lengthy. There’s a lot of Zoom interviews, a lot of meets with different people, with all the experts, with the psychologists,” Carina explained.
“It’s literally like matchmaking.com. The casting team, the producers — I think more of their time and their job is to find a match. They take that very seriously. I don’t think Married At First Sight would be going for however long it’s been going for if it wasn’t authentic and for the right reasons.”
Say what you want about producers mismatching couples for the sake of drama, but she has a point!
MAFS producers have to approve everyone’s outfits
Her relationship might not have been consistent in the experiment, but Carina always showed up to the dinner parties like she was about to walk the red carpet. Carina revealed that she would put all her energy into planning outfits each week; however, they ultimately had to be approved by producers.
“So essentially the way it worked is you have to send a bunch of different outfits to your main producer, and then they have to get them approved from the big producer. But you have to wear colour, and I was so not a colour girly,” she detailed.
“Obviously, first in best dress, so whoever got their outfit in from the girls first, they approve the colour, and then it’s like a ripple effect. So if someone gets pink first then everyone else has to get the least favourite colours.”
So basically, whoever is wearing pink at the dinner party was most likely the first person to get their outfit approved, got it.
Brides are allowed to get their hair and makeup done, but there are rules
As well as being known as the fashion queen on her season, Carina had a different hairstyle and bold makeup look at every dinner party. She said that producers allowed her to leave the apartment to get ready each week, but there was “a really tight schedule” she had to follow.
“The day before you get your call time for the next day, and for example, you might get call time at 9am,” she said.
“I worked with my team, my hair and makeup artists very closely, and the night before, we would text and liaise about when I would go to the studio. So essentially, I would just go to their studio, and I would leave a big block. So if I had a 9am call, I would wake up very early at 4.30 or 5 and then get to their studio, get hair and makeup done and then get back to the apartment.
“So production was quite lenient in that aspect, and I was quite persistent with wanting to get my own hair and makeup done.”
A 4.30am wake up on the day of a dinner party is pretty rough, considering filming often goes late into the night, but in the words of Beyoncé, pretty hurts.
Participants can’t get drunk at the dinner parties
Carina revealed that MAFS producers are very strict with how many drinks participants have at the dinner party — which is wild when you realise this means no one is actually drunk when they’re yelling across the table and throwing wine.
“When I meet people, they’re like, ‘So do you get really drunk on camera and it’s just like, unlimited drinks?’. And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no. They cap you a hundred per cent,” she said.
“Although that would be fun and it’s like a good party kind of thing, no. They’re quite cautious, and obviously, there are a lot of moving aspects like occupational health and safety and the legal side. But yeah, they cap you for sure. All in moderation.”
The dinner party food is actually good
Although they can’t get drunk, Carina said participants are fed extremely well at the dinner parties, and she was “obsessed” with the food.
“I personally loved the food. They always had a few different dishes, but always a meat dish. It was red meat, either prawns [or] chicken. They had potatoes, vegetables and then salad,” she described.
“When we were breaking and waiting around and stuff, they would have loads of snacks for us as well as games and lots of beverages — obviously non-alcoholic beverages. It was a lot of food, and if I don’t have to cook it, I’m good.”
You might not find love on MAFS, but at least you’re guaranteed to be well fed.
Obsessed with MAFS? Check out PEDESTRIAN.TV’s brand new reality TV podcast Villain Edit, where we unpack all the wild, chaotic and messy moments from the show. Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.
