TV darling Kate Ritchie returns to the small screen next week as host of Channel 10’s Don’t Tell the Bride and freely admits that some of its stars are far braver than she could ever be.
The show’s premise involves handing grooms a $25,000 cheque and allowing them to plan an entire wedding – with absolutely NO input from their bride. They even get to pick the bride’s dress.
“I think a fear of the unknown is the scariest thing,” says Gold Logie winner Kate, a fan of the original BBC version of the show.
“I’m not sure how I’d manage if, three weeks before the wedding, I couldn’t have contact with the man I was marrying, or to have things so out of my control. The stars of the show really are our very brave brides.”
“There are some men who can’t be trusted with a $25,000 cheque,” says Kate, referring to one groom who contemplates spending more of the budget on the buck’s night than the rest of the wedding combined.
“I’m not sure about some of their priorities,’’ she adds “but despite all the stuff that goes down on the way to the altar, the show really highlights how two people can be so different and have different priorities, but despite those differences are in love and eventually get to where they’re meant to be.”
Next month, thirty-three-year-old Kate celebrates her second wedding anniversary to former NRL player Stuart Webb and says married life has been perfect.
The couple wed in September 2010 in a low-key ceremony at Quamby Estate in Tasmania.
“Two years have flow by and I really love being married,” says Kate who admits she’s not sure she would have trusted her groom to plan their wedding unaided.
“No way! As far as planning our wedding, he was heavily involved and it was a really nice process for Stuart and I to be involved in together, but as far as handing the reins over to him, I’m not sure he could be trusted with the whole shebang.”
“I think if Stuart had planned our wedding, the food would have been great and so would the transport and that kind of stuff, but I have no idea what the dress would have been like. However, in actual fact, even when I was picking out my dress, I’m not sure that I knew what it was going to be until it all came together.
I think it’s more about the dress finding you than you finding the dress.”
After two decades on Home and Away and then stints on radio as well as Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities and Cops:LAC, Kate’s new role as host of Don’t Tell the Bride marks her long-awaited return to television.
“I guess I’m less excited about seeing myself on screen than I am about the whole process of making a TV show,’’ says Kate. “I love the comraderie of working on a set and with a crew and watching all the elements come together to create the final product.”
“Working on Don’t Tell the Bride has been great fun. The show’s really entertaining and will certainly provide a good laugh. After all, who doesn’t love a wedding?”
Kate’s own wedding was a super secret affair, held on an estate in Tasmania and, the couple even turned down a reported $500,000 offer for the pictures.
“There was never any question about it. I grew up on television and shared much of my life with everybody and it was important to have the day that we wanted’’ she says.
“On one hand, of course you want to tell everyone and share it with everyone, but it’s also important to keep some of that stuff close to your chest because it is so precious because it was just us – and nobody could buy that from us.
“Fundamentally, you need to have the day you really want and you just have to keep focussing on that.
“Rather than getting carried away with the hoopla of the day, just keep coming back to what it is all really about, two people committing to one another, and it will be a lovely day.”
Don’t Tell the Bride will airs on Channel 10 on Tuesdays (7pm) from August 21.
