CBS confirmed Tuesday that it will air Rob and Amber Get Married, a two-hour special broadcast of the wedding of Survivor and The Amazing Race couple Rob Mariano and Amber Brkich, on Tuesday, May 24 at 9PM ET/PT. As Reality TV World first reported last Friday, the couple tied the knot during a "secret" ceremony in the Bahamas on Saturday, April 16.
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In addition to documenting Saturday's beachside ceremony at the Atlantis Paradise Island Resort & Casino, the special will also include a behind the scenes look at the events that led up to the Colin Cowie-planned wedding. Starting with Amber's bridal shower and following on through the bachelor and bachelorette parties, the rehearsal dinner, and the wedding ceremony and reception, the CBS special will give viewers a look at the special surprises that Rob and Amber planned for each other.
Cowie, a renowned event planner, has produced celebrity weddings for Jerry Seinfeld, Kelsey Grammer, Lisa Kudrow, Sugar Ray Leonard and Barry Bonds among others.
As previously noted, while the Rob and Amber Get Married special will air in same time period as the by-then-concluded The Amazing Race 7 series in which the couple is still competing, its broadcast date will put it up against what has become one-half of reality TV's biggest annual event -- the season finale performance show of Fox's smash hit American Idol.
Although CBS declined to release any details about the wedding, according to reports, the couple was wed in a sunset beach ceremony that included arches made of seashells. Amber's bridesmaids reportedly wore teal gowns while the groomsmen dressed more casually. A lavish shell-themed poolside reception for newlyweds and their couple of hundred guests followed the ceremony. After the reception, the couple honeymooned at the resort's $25,000-a-night Bridge Suite.
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All guests were required to sign confidentiality agreements in order to be able to attend the nuptials. According to Reality TV World sources, the guest list included Survivor host Jeff Probst and following the reception, the couple continued their celebration at the resort's Dragons nightclub.
While news of the broadcast of the couple's eventual wedding had long been expected, the announcement did feature one surprise -- the fact that Survivor producer Mark Burnett will not be producing the special.
"Survivor creator Mark Burnett is very interested in producing our wedding," Rob had told the Boston Globe last summer. "Obviously, the wolves are circling around them, trying to profit from young love," Burnett also confirmed to the paper at the time. "If the wedding reveals them to be the funny, vulnerable, and interesting people that I know them to be, away from the Machiavellian game, then people will come to like the at-home Rob and Amber. I don't want [the wedding] to be some reality television farce. I would like to work with them and protect them."
Instead, Rob and Amber Get Married will be produced by DME, Inc. for Magic Molehill Productions, Inc., with Chuck Dalaklis and Theresa McKeown serving as executive producers and Bob Asher as co-executive producer.
Better known as Dalaklis McKeown Entertainment, DME, Inc. has previously produced unscripted series such as Merge, I Do Diaries, and VH1 All Access (and several wedding specials) for smaller cable networks including VH1, Lifetime, The Travel Channel, and Soapnet. Needless to say, it would appear that "The Robfather" has once again used his wiles to negotiate the best possible deal for himself -- after all, if there's one thing that's even more Machiavellian than the game of Survivor, it's the world of the showbiz. As the tagline of Burnett's The Apprentice NBC reality series states, "it's not personal, just business."