‘Married at First Sight’ Groom’s Family Had ‘No Idea’ He Was Marrying a Stranger

As Matt Gwynne prepared to walk down the aisle and meet wife Amber Bowles for the first time, there was just one thing giving the Married at First Sight groom pause.

In Wednesday’s Season 9 premiere of the Lifetime series (produced by Kinetic Content), the professional basketball player confessed that he hadn’t let his family in on the social experiment he was about to undergo, even excluding them from the unconventional nuptials.

“My family has no idea I’m about to get married to a stranger … no clue,” he said. “Growing up, I never would have imagined that my family, my parents especially, wouldn’t be there the day I got married because we were very close.”

With family drama complicating things, Matt was feeling a little anxious heading into his big day with just his friends by his side.

“I just hope that my future wife and her family understand the situation I’m in, and also I hope that they understand that I think family is important.” he said. “I believe in marriage, and I want this to last forever.”

Prior to the Season 9 premiere, Married at First Sight‘s newest sex expert, Dr. Viviana Coles, opened up about taking the couples’ counseling to a whole new level this season to PopCulture.com.

“It’s mainly to help them to understand how true intimacy can be built on a strange new platform, like on TV,” she explained of her role on the show. “A lot of the times [the couples] would kind of look at me like, ‘What is she going to ask me about?’ … but at the end of our conversation, it’s not been something super intimidating.”

“It’s definitely a more direct approach, in this situation,” she noted of the marriage experiment’s intense demands on each person looking for love. “It’s a lot of cutting through the noise and getting to what matters in a relationship.”

And while the weddings were definitely filled with heart warming and nerve racking moments, Coles teased there’s much more to come throughout the season.

“I just can’t wait to see how it all plays out in the story,” she told PopCulture. “Because they’re all colorful, colorful people, experts included.”

Married at First Sight (produced by Kinetic Content) airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Lifetime.

Photo credit: Lifetime