Oh, yeah, this is definitely going to end well. Bachelor alum Jamie Otis is no stranger to looking for love on reality TV—but she took her unconventional search for romance to new levels when she agreed to participate in a new show called Married at First Sight, which arranges legal marriages between complete strangers.
Billed as an extreme social experiment, the show uses a team of experts—a sexologist, a spiritualist, a psychologist, and a sociologist—to match applicants with their "ideal" romantic partners. The participants know nothing about their future spouses (not even their names!) before they meet at the altar on their wedding day.
During the premiere episode on Tuesday, July 8, Otis—a contestant on Ben Flajnik's season of The Bachelor in 2012—was paired with software salesman Doug Hehner. Prior to the ceremony, she seemed hopeful about finding "true love" through the experiment. When it came time to actually walk down the aisle, though, she seemed significantly less optimistic.
"This is the worst feeling. Obviously I wasn't like, 'What a knockout!'" she said in a voiceover. "I couldn't help but look at his family, because they were, like, beaming, huge smiles, looking at me, and I just happen to be not attracted to the guy."
"She was freaking out. And it seems like she doesn't know what's going on," Hehner, 31, recalled. "It was a tense moment."
"Tense" is an understatement. Asked to pledge her eternal undying love to her groom, Otis, 27, hesitated, trying (unsuccessfully) to hold back her tears. "I'm getting married right now to someone I don't know," her voiceover said. "I'm thinking I just made the worst decision of my life. I am so scared."
The episode ended on a cliffhanger, so viewers will have to tune in next week to find out what happened, but Otis hinted on Twitter that everything worked out for the best. In response to a follower who wrote, "So happy for @jamienotis & @doughehner!!!! Congrats," the reality TV star tweeted, "Thanks my dear!" She also said she had "no regrets" and was "very happy" with the outcome.
"The truth is, I never envisioned a traditional wedding for myself," she told The Knot of why she signed up for the show. "Nothing about my life is traditional, so why worry about having a traditional wedding?" In the end, she added, "it was a genuinely intimate, personal, and real experience. It's been a life-changing journey."
