The symbol of the franchise is the rose, that shows that a contestant will stay another week. How many roses does the show use in a typical season?
The symbol of The Bachelor franchise is the rose, that shows that a contestant will stay another week. How many roses does the show use in a typical season, and do they use real flowers?
As we go into a new season of The Bachelor, it's time to ask the big questions again. Not will Matt James find love, but things like where does Chris Harrison get these roses and how does Matt remember the girls' names? The mystery surrounding the production of the show has largely melted away in recent years, but these small secrets still confound viewers on the first night. With ample information on the internet from Bachelor podcasts, contestant interviews and Reality Steve, we should be able to answer all these questions.
Roses for The Bachelor and Bachelorette are hand picked, trimmed and prepared for each rose ceremony. A 2016 interview with then-production designer Angelic Rutherford in the New York Post reveals all the hard work the production team puts into making sure each rose looks perfect for television. She revealed that the show primarily uses a certain strain of rose called American Spirit, unless they are in a foreign country where those aren't available. They use tricks like putting pennies in the roses' water to make them unfurl more to keep each rose looking picture perfect. In fact, they buy as many as eight dozen roses for the early episodes, to ensure that they can find the best looking roses to present at the ceremony. They also keep extras on hand to swap out. For example, if someone gets a rose on the first one-on-one date of the episode, it typically looks pretty ragged when it comes time for the rose ceremony. Production often swaps out those roses, and Rutherford admitted that they even had to scotch tape a rose back together at one point.
An article from Pop Sugar estimates that in a typical season of The Bachelor or Bachelorette, about 93 roses are handed out. Looking at the cost of 93 roses in the Los Angeles area, the amount comes out to around $760. However, by Rutherford's estimation, 96 roses are purchased for each of the early weeks of the show alone. Not to mention, finding roses in the foreign countries that the show usually travels to, (not this season, of course) can be difficult. Rutherford points to a time when they were filming in Fiji, and had to import roses from another island. That kind of instance would run up much more money than just $760.
It's a safe bet that the show spends thousands of dollars on roses each season. Multiply that by 25 season of The Bachelor, 16 seasons of The Bachelorette and 6 seasons of Bachelor In Paradise; California's florists must be set for life!
The Bachelor airs Monday nights at 8pm EST on ABC.
Source: New York Post, Pop Sugar
Related Topics About The AuthorMolly Peck is a graduate of Emerson College with a BA in Visual Media Arts concentrating in Television. She is currently based in Los Angeles, where she hopes to continue writing for and about television.
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