Saying "I Don't" To "Marriage or Mortgage"

Netflix’s Marriage or Mortgage is a new reality show that pegs itself as casual pandemic viewing — but when I watched it, I couldn’t relax.

The show’s producers ask couples if they'd rather spend tens of thousands of dollars on a wedding or on a down payment for a home. In each of 10 episodes, charismatic rivals Nichole Holmes, a real estate agent, and Sarah Miller, a wedding planner, compete for couples’ bids by chauffeuring them around Nashville to houses and venues.

As soon as the series begins, the absurdity does too. The hosts tell couples that it’ll cost them $1,600 to create their own specialty moonshine to use during the wedding toast, or $500 to rent and assemble a small Instagrammable seating area for 100 guests. There’s a double-decker bus rental for guests available, and an on-site flower crown florist. The reality of American housing prices kicks in too: that single-story, 1,300-square-foot house they’re looking at? Nearly $360,000.

Close to the end of each episode — surprise! — Holmes and Miller reveal last-minute deals and steals to max out the couples’ anxiety. It’s a fun and stressful moment when a couple finally chooses whether to have their dream wedding or to invest in their first home.

But the theatrics may not provide the distraction from the monotony of the pandemic that the show’s creators were going for.

It’s worth noting, for example, that the cost of custom moonshine is more than the latest round of checks the federal government issued last month. That small set of Instagrammable furniture? It costs as much as my rent. And when housing prices came up, it made me acutely aware that we didn’t receive any pandemic-era federal mortgage or rent relief this year.

The money all belongs to the couples (the show provides nothing, just two very competitive professionals) and as they waver on putting $30,000 toward a wedding or a house, it’s a little hard not to hate them or worry about them, depending on the situation. These aren’t celebrities, tycoons or heirs with million-dollar budgets, but a mix of upper and lower middle income people. In short, the anxiety I felt watching people shell out thousands of dollars somewhat deadened the emotional kicks that the show intended to deliver.

It’s not for lack of trying. In each episode, the real estate agent dresses up a room that is supposed to turn the couple into buyers — a kid’s room for one couple’s future adopted child, or a decorative stone in the middle of an empty lot (the couple could build, the agent proposed) engraved with a quote from one of the partners’ grandfather, who had recently died. One bride’s dream wedding involved a fountain of ranch dressing (spoiler: she got it).

However, it’s hard to make buying stuff seem romantic and fun these days. People should be able to have the kind of wedding and home they want. But during the pandemic, when millions are barely getting by, it’s simply not that fun to watch other people spend lavishly.

Several of the wedding scenes included disclaimers saying that the couple had decreased their invite list or postponed their wedding because of COVID-19. Perhaps, if we’re lucky, the pandemic will serve as a referendum on the wedding industrial complex, and our culturally-accepted practice of taking out loans to celebrate a marriage. A better world exists, and it includes housing security and less pressure to throw the wedding of the century.