‘Wedding Coach’ Jamie Lee Prepared for the Unpredictable in Netflix’s New Marriage Reality Show

Weddings are intense, exhausting, and physically demanding. They tax the spirit as well as the body, yet we can’t stop them. Weddings will happen, even if they have to be done virtually. What can a person do to prepare for the decathlon that is planning the most important day ever?! They can enlist the help of… The Wedding Coach.

Okay, Jamie Lee can’t possibly help out everyone with their nuptials. But she can bring her unique POV and can-do attitude to a season’s worth of couples looking to destress and follow the fun—and that’s exactly what she does in Netflix’s new reality show The Wedding Coach. The series is unlike any other wedding show you’ve seen before, in that it doesn’t focus on the extravagance and excess that other shows may prioritize. Instead, author/comedian Jamie Lee helps each overstressed couple release the pressure and focus on what really matters: each other.

Helping Jamie each week is one of her many funny friends—Fortune Feimster, Jon Gabrus, Punkie Johnson, Matteo Lane, Mamrie Hart, and Alesha Renee—who tag along as a plus one and either help get the party started or keep the party from getting out of control.

Decider had the opportunity to chat with the wedding coach herself, Jamie Lee, about finding the fun in the world of weddings.

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Decider: This show offers a totally different perspective not seen in traditional wedding shows. It’s a comedy show, but it’s still very much a wedding show. What perspective do comedians bring to wedding traditions?

Jamie Lee: I think that comedians, you know, we’re trained in heightened observation of human behavior and human interactions and dynamics, and I think all of those things are already heightened when people are getting married. So I think it’s really exciting to bring in people who are there to call it like they see it. I think there’s so much comedy to be mined in weddings. It’s such a strange, stressful time for so many people. I kind of think comedy and weddings should have merged more seamlessly sooner, but I’m very glad to be the person who did it in the TV space. Obviously, there have been plenty of funny wedding movies.

Well, you literally wrote the book on this—Weddiculous. When did you decide to marry weddings and comedy and make that a big part of your career?

I don’t think it was a very deliberate decision. Basically, what happened was, I got engaged, and I started posting stuff on my Instagram, just from my perspective, kind of jabbing at myself a little bit about being a bit of a basic B. My very good, brilliant, funny friend, Jacqueline Novak reached out and she was like, “This could be a book. I feel like this is an idea that hasn’t been explored. There hasn’t just been a really funny, honest wedding book—or if there has, you haven’t done it yet. Why not take a stab?” So I ended up basically writing the book in real time as I was getting married. So everything that was happening, I would just go home and document it in a Google Doc and just fill up the book that way. It really was like a journal that turned into a book basically.

Writing a book is hard, and then getting married is hard, and you’re like, “I’m gonna do both at the same time!”

You have no idea. It was truly a psychotic undertaking. I mean, in a way it was kind of cathartic because I had an outlet to vent about all of the things I was experiencing, everything from family tension, all the way to cake tasting and dealing with a florist who was dropping the ball. There were a lot of moving pieces and I think that having the book as a place to turn to to discuss those things actually was very therapeutic in a lot of ways.

Now that you’ve filmed a season of Netflix’s The Wedding Coach, what would you do for yourself if you could go back in time and coach yourself as a bride? 

I probably would have given her a lesson on how to just chill out and regain perspective, because I was definitely wound up about things that ultimately didn’t really matter. At certain points there might have been a time where I was like, “Have you thought about eloping?” Because I definitely had some moments where, I feel like in my heart and soul, [eloping] was on the table. But also I’m not a quitter, so we just went through the big 125 person wedding, which actually isn’t even that big compared to some weddings. But for me it felt big.

Even though the show is funny, there are some surprisingly tense and real moments in the show. There are big disagreements between some of the couples and tense family drama. Were you expecting to have to get serious and deal with real moments? 

Well, the funny thing is, I definitely wasn’t expecting anything in advance because in making reality TV, it’s actually impossible [to expect things]. I guess you could orchestrate the moments, but I feel like the audience would be able to tell and that would just be really weird and dishonest. But I will say I kind of knew in my heart of hearts that things like this might come up, which is why I was interested in making a show like this. You don’t even have to try that hard to get some good juice and drama and real moments. Like, it just kind of comes with the territory of getting married.

Which of your funny friends was the most stoked to coach a wedding?

Mamrie Hart was just so fun. The comedian that I brought along for each episode I called my plus one. She was a really stellar plus one in that she loves to party and she’s very unapologetic about wanting to just like, get lit. She was a blast. She was so game for everything we threw her away.

And that episode, we actually threw a bachelorette party for the bride because no one in her immediate circle was doing that. So yeah, Mamrie was just the best and we took fun shots. We also did absinthe at the wedding. We were just letting loose and I feel like she really brought out the fun in me as well. She’s just a great partner.

Did you match comedians to weddings? Like, Jon Gabrus helps out with a frat brother of the groom who needs to be reined in. I can’t think of a better person for that task than Gabrus.

Yes, yes. There definitely was some thought behind the pairing, for sure. Some of it was scheduling a little bit, because you’re having to go to real weddings. So you’re like, “Hey, comedian who’s busy, can you actually come to this wedding on this particular day? Will your other work allow that?” So yeah, I would say it was a mix but we definitely put thought into who went to which wedding.

I also really liked the therapeutic ripping of the wedding magazines. Is that a tradition? Did you do that before your wedding?

I didn’t. That would be one that I wish I had done because I do think that bridal magazines—they are so fun, and getting married and finally having those magazines actually speak to me specifically was like oh, wow, I’m a bride now. I can buy these things and make these choices and decisions. I think they’re an absolute blast. One of the best parts of getting married is celebrating the fantasy of it. But I do think at a certain point, some of that stuff starts to swish around in your head and make you a little nuts, almost like over attention to detail, just getting really wrapped up in the whole racket of weddings. And I think that at a certain point, it does feel nice to give the middle finger to the magazines that are sort of pushing this ideal—especially at women, mostly women. I mean, it’s everybody, but it falls on women a lot of the time.

Lastly, is there anything that you learned along the way from going to all these weddings? Did anyone coach you?

I feel like this should have been more obvious to me, but it was amazing how every single person, all different types of weddings, all different types of cultural backgrounds—everyone was stressed out. I mean, obviously, they reached out [to the show] because they were stressed out, but the fact that you’re watching all these different types of weddings, and they have this commonality of everyone feeling beaten down. I’m not gonna lie, it did make me think about, especially during the pandemic, when people can’t have bigger weddings, it did make me think a lot more about elopement or like having a small thing and doing a party later. That’s more low pressure and you don’t feel like you have to appease everybody and be an event planner. I think that it started to make me think about alternatives to weddings, and how to celebrate your relationship a little bit more than maybe I had before.

The Wedding Coach is now streaming on Netflix.

Stream The Wedding Coach on Netflix