40 Surprising 'Love Is Blind' Facts You Probably Didn't Know

Proposing to someone only a few days after meeting them is already pretty crazy, but without ever seeing them is a whole new level. The show's creator made it clear that no one from production put pressure on the couples to get engaged. "Nobody had to do anything," creator and executive producer Chris Coelen told Variety. "It was if you find someone, if you choose."

In an interview with Refinery29, cast member Damian Powers confirmed that the show was, in fact, filmed in October 2018, meaning the couples who said "I do" on the show had to keep their marriage a secret for 14 months and celebrated their one-year anniversary before the show even aired.

When the singles were just getting to know one another, the pod dates were 8-10 minutes each and set up by producers. "In the beginning, just from a practical standpoint, we have to give them certain time limits just so we can get them through and they have a chance to talk to everyone.," Coelen told E! News.

As cast members started establishing connections their dates got longer and longer. "They were there pretty much 24-7. It's funny because we would encourage them to take [breaks], 'You gotta eat! You gotta get some sleep!' But they didn't want to, they wanted to stay in those pods," Coelen told Variety.

This is for obvious reasons: To ensure that the singles don't see each other before getting engaged. There was a different team of producers for each gender too.

To pass the time, cast member Kenny Barnes said the guys would have plank competitions, go for runs, and even cook together. Jessica Batten told Refinery29 that she would journal every day. "I wanted to remember things because every day is like a month in there and so much can change."

It looks like the cast was living the dream, moving from plush pods to meticulously-decorated living quarters, but the sleeping arrangements were a far cry from luxury: "We slept in trailers and they were correctional facility beds. The design was to just strip us down from our comfort level," Barnes told Refinery29.

In order to give their full focus to the task at hand, a.k.a. finding a spouse, the cast members had their phones and other electronic devices confiscated before they entered the pods.

With the experiment eliminating sight from the equation, it was important that the cast members could hear each other very well. The pod was built with soundproof walls and a speaker at the front that connected with the adjacent pod. "We didn’t want any sound to bleed through any other pods," Coelen told Variety.

When cast members aren't allowed to leave the set, it can make them a bit stir crazy. Producers did their best to fulfill requests from the singles. "If you wanted a special snack they'd go run and get it. Bailey's and coffee was my go-to," Barnes told Refinery29

Producers were also available to help cast members fulfill anything they needed for dates, from board games to special meals. "[Cast members would] say, 'I'd love to have a dinner of lasagna with this person. So, we'd get them some lasagna,” Coelen told OprahMag.com.

Again, the producers wanted to interfere as little as possible. The singles were free to ask anything they wanted. Sometimes that led to great connections...and other times not so much. "And you see on the show, some people decided to [ask] 'How tall are you, what do you look like?' Other people were like, 'Why would I ever do that? That's not the point of this,'" Coelen told Variety.

After all, the whole idea behind the show is for the cast members to create genuine emotional connections. "They were never interrupted in terms of like a producer saying, 'Hey, talk about this, talk about that,' they just did what they wanted to do," Coelen told Variety.

"Lauren and I had bonded over our love of Hennessy at one point. We went into the pod one day and then there was Hennessy in there for both of us. [The producers] listened,” Cameron Hamilton told Refinery29.

Vanessa and Nick Lachey told the hosts of People Now that some of the contestants would use celebrities to describe to their date what they looked like. And, according to Vanessa, it wasn’t always a close resemblance.

The combination of uncomfortable sleeping accommodations and adrenaline led to little sleep. "We're getting four hours of sleep on cots. We'd wake up and go for runs. Like, 'we've got to get blood flow going or we're gonna lose our minds,'" Barnes told Refinery29.

How do you kill time on a date when you know you're not interested? "Some people actually did take naps in the pods cause they knew they weren't going to get together," Hamilton told Refinery29.

When watching the show, viewers only see short snippets of conversations inside and out of the pods, but in reality the singles were filming for up to 20 hours per day.

It wasn't only romantic relationships that blossomed in the pods. Real friendships were made too. Lauren Speed said that they spent their time out of the pods talking, baking, and twerking. "It was literally a sorority," Speed told Refinery29. And Mark Cuervas told Refinery29 that his non-romantic dates "turned into a lot of genuine friendships" too.

There were 40-50 people who started the experiment, but not everyone made it through the 10 days of pod dating. "It became evident as the process went on, from that big group of people, that there were some people that more people were gravitating towards then others," Coelen told E! News. "There was a certain point where we did a whittling down of people just to focus internally on the people who were really connecting, to allow them more time. We ended up having maybe 20-25 people in the pods at that point."

Even before the 10 days of pod dating are up because when you know you know. After getting engaged, the cast members get to meet in person the next day.

One of the first things people do when they get engaged is call their families to tell them the good news. But the secrecy surrounding the show, combined with the no-phone policy, meant couples couldn't share their news until they returned home to Atlanta, Georgia.

"The premise of the show was not a secret, but as adults it was up to them as to when (or whether) they chose to tell their families," Coelen told Bustle. The couples had to introduce their families for the show, but production didn't force them into a big reveal.

All of the cast members had to be from Atlanta, Georgia. Coelen told Variety that producers thought this would help relationships work out in the long term. "We wanted to give them a real shot at making their love and their marriage working," Coelen said.

It goes without saying that the cast couldn't just pop into a jewelry store to pick out their engagement rings. Instead, the show arranged for a collection of various rings to be brought to the studio that the men were able to pick from. "It's obviously such a gigantic moment in people's lives that we wanted it to be as authentic to them as it possibly could be," Coelen told ET.

One thing the cast members couldn't talk about? Ring shopping. That decision was entirely a surprise...as if seeing their partner for the first time wasn't a big enough surprise!

The jeweler for the Love Is Blind rings has not been revealed, but leave it to the show's devoted fans to figure out that both Lauren, Jessica, and Amber sported the same three-diamond stunner.

The show didn’t expect the experiment to work as well as it did. In fact, two couples left the pods newly engaged, but weren't featured on the show. "It wasn't that we didn't want to follow them...we literally just didn't feel like we had the bandwidth to be able to do justice to all of the stories," Coelen told ET. “It was overwhelming in terms of the way that it worked so well for people."

We're honestly disappointed the show chose not to follow the engagement of Rory Newbrough and Danielle Drouin because it sounds liked it ended pretty dramatically. After the couple parted ways, Drouin began dating another Love Is Blind cast member named Matt Thomas.

In episode four the newly engaged couples are whisked away on a pre-honeymoon getaway to match their physical connections to their emotional ones. It all happens at the magical Grand Velas Resort in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, which you can totally book for your own *very romantic* vacation.

After their pre-honeymoon in Mexico, the couples return to real life to plan their weddings. Instead of moving back into their individual homes, they all moved in with their fiancées in the same building. Refinery29 speculates that the building is Spectrum on Spring in Atlanta.