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    Why Love Is Blind’s Lauren Speed Thinks Her Engagement Ring Was Fake

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    Watch: Love Is Blind Season 11’s Only Married Couple Files for Divorce

    Lauren Speed is pods-tive that her initial engagement ring was a knockoff. 

    The Love Is Blind alum—who wed husband Cameron Hamilton during season one of the Netflix show—revealed why she thinks the engagement ring production provided for the couple was fake. 

    “I think they got real rings now, but mine was not,” Speed said on a recent episode of Cam Newton’s eponymous podcast. “The diamond fell out and turned green when I got in the pool.”

    “I was heartbroken,” she added, “but now I think they have a jewelry partner, so they get real rings now.”

    In addition to the couple’s engagement rings, Netflix also foots the bill for the brides’ wedding dresses, the wedding ceremonies and gives the contestants stipends for participating on the show, with Speed sharing that she and Hamilton received about $700 a week for their time filming the reality dating series.

    And while the show’s participants can certainly clink their metallic wine glasses to that, the series’ creator Chris Coelen previously shed light on production’s bling budget, revealing that while all the couples’ selected engagement rings have different prices, “it’s generally in that $3,500 to $5,000 range…with some variations.”

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    And for anyone hoping for something a bit more extravagant? 

    “If they want to upgrade their rings, they’re welcome to do that,” Coelen continued to Entertainment Weekly in 2025. “We have nothing to do with that. We give them the rings, they do what they want.”

    Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images

    Though it seems times have changed since Speed, 38, and Hamilton, 36, met and married while filming Love Is Blind in 2018, their bond continues to grow in the right direction.

    In fact, the pair welcomed their first baby together, a boy named Ezra William Hamilton, last October following years of fertility struggles. 

    “To God be the GLORY!” Speed wrote on Instagram at the time, sharing that he arrived “a little earlier than planned, but perfectly on God’s time.”

    And while the path hasn’t been easy, the influencer would do it all again sight unseen for the life she lives today, noting how she was “healing, resting, and soaking up all the love.”

    Keep reading for more Love Is Blind secrets…

    Netflix

    1. Are contestants paid to be on Love Is Blind? Former star Matthew Duliba said they are paid $5,000 to appear on the pod period of the show.The real money is made in sponsorships afterward, as season two alums Deepti Vempati and Natalie Lee said they each made about $500,000 as influencers in under two years after their episodes aired in 2022.2. Where do the cast members sleep while in the pods? According to Netflix, the contestants slept on cot beds in trailers next to the lounges during season one, but for season two they upgraded to hotel rooms to be more comfortable. They’re escorted to and from their rooms by staff so they can’t secretly see anyone.”You’re actually at a hotel,” season four’s Micah Lussier shared on TikTok in 2025. “That’s where you’re staying, and then the pods that you see is a set, so think of a big studio, and then the bathrooms are outside in trailers.”

    COURTESY OF NETFLIX

    3. The reality stars don’t get access to their phones starting in the pods until after they’re back from their tropical vacation portion of filming. Shayne Jansen shared of their vacations, “You don’t have your phone or anything on you.”4. The pods portion of the experiment lasts about 10 days, with 40-50 hopeful singles serving as the initial cast. But over the course of the process, some singles are let go. “There was a certain point where we did a whittling down of people just to focus internally on the people who were really connecting, to allow them more time,”Love Is Blind creator Chris Coelen told E! News. “We ended up having maybe 20-25 people in the pods at that point.”5. The first dates between all of the singles were set up speed-dating style rotation, with everyone spending eight to 10 minutes with each person of the opposite sex. From then on, there were no limitations put on who you could talk to, when you could talk to them and for how long, as long as a production intermediary set it up as they were unable to communicate with each other outside of the pods. 

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    6. According to Sal Perez from season two, the singles are given “talking points” and “questions” before heading into their dates, but they don’t have to use them. “There were kind of topics for the day,” Kyle Abrams added in an interview with E! News. “It was good if there was a lull in conversation, you just refer to the little notebook and you can drum up conversation.”That being said, the show is far from scripted. As contestant Kelly Chase told Business Insider, “Although it might sound unbelievable (trust me, it was hard to believe myself), the show wasn’t scripted for the cast.”7. As for what they eat on set? Kelly said that was one of the aspects of filming she enjoyed most, explaining that contestants are offered a wide range of options while in the pods. “During the first 10 days of filming,” she said, “we could choose from catered food that included options like grilled fish, chicken, steak, vegetables, pasta, rice, and fruit.”

    Ser Baffo/Netflix

    8. All the proposals happen on the same day, though some are shown earlier in the episodes to avoid watching them all back-to-back.“Everyone gets engaged on that one day. And then the next day is the big reveal day,” Kellysaid, per Cosmo. “And then the couples separate and go back through their own door. You meet them [your partner] for 15 minutes—the person you just got engaged to—and then you don’t see them again for a few days. It’s crazy.”9. Where do the engagement rings come from? “We supply them with the rings, and at that point, those rings are theirs,” the creator told Entertainment Weekly in 2025. “They never have to give them back if things don’t work out. They’re their rings. And if they want to say that they paid for them, then that’s up to them. They can say whatever they want.”

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    10. Hosts Vanessa Lachey and Nick Lachey are no longer allowed to be at the reveals. “We all used to be at the reveal,” Vanessa told Parade in 2025. “So when they would come out on the red carpet, it was me, it was Nick, we had like the glam girls there, we had costume design, we had audio. We had everybody standing there.”But it ended up being “probably 50 people” in the room, which detracted from the romance.”It got to a point where it got too loud,” Vanessa added. “After that, they were like, ‘No more people at the reveal. Just the cameras and the couple. This is their moment.'”

    GREG GAYNE/NETFLIX

    11. Hoping to see a few proposals, producers were not expecting more than five couples to get engaged in season one. So when two other couples (in addition to the six the show chose to follow) also ended the pod portion with an engagement, producers ultimately couldn’t continue filming their journey. “We felt like we wanted to tell diverse stories frankly,” Coelen reasoned. “We weren’t sure where the stories were going to go, everybody felt like they truly found the person they wanted to spend their life with and we had an abundance of story…we just didn’t have time in the show to follow them, which is incredible to me.”

    Instagram/Rory Newbrough

    12. One of those engaged couples was Rory Newbrough, who was often seen giving advice to the other men, and Danielle Drouin. They spent a week together in Miami as the other engaged couples went to Mexico to continue filming. But soon after they returned to Atlanta, they had a “very amicable” breakup when Danielle realized she still had feelings for another cast member, Matt Thomas. “She ended up wanting to pursue that,” Rory explained to People. Danielle and Matt ultimately didn’t last either. 13. The other unaired season one engagement was between Westley Baer, who was briefly shown discussing dating as a shorter man, and Lexie Skipper. Despite not continuing with the show, they dated for three months back in Atlanta. But Westley revealed to People that his career change caused their split. “I made a crazy decision to sell everything I owned, and I moved to Asia,” he said.Two season two couples—Caitlin McKee and Joey Miller and Kara Williams and Jason Beaumont—also got engaged, but didn’t have their journeys filmed.

    Instagram

    14. Are constants allowed to talk when there’s not cameras around?”In the pod stage, the answer is no,” Micah said. “There’s always cameras rolling in those pods. And when you’re in the lounge, they don’t want people talking if there’s not cameras rolling, so it will be quiet on set. And that is because if you’re talking about stuff, they can miss part of the storyline.”She said the experience in Mexico is similar. “You won’t fly together, you won’t do anything off camera until they leave you alone in that room that first night,” she said. “So, that’s the first time that you get a talk off-camera.”But when they go home, there’s more freedom to speak without being filmed.”You have scheduled filming days, like every other day,” she explained. “So of course, you get a ton of time off camera to get to know each other without them in your face.”

    Netflix

    15. Who pays for the wedding dresses?”They pay for the dress,” Micah said of the production team. “I remember when we went there were some dresses that were included and part of the budget, and we could choose from those. And there’s a lot to choose from.”However, they also “had the option” to “upgrade” to a more expensive dress that they paid for. The season four star added, “To my knowledge, no one ever did that.”16. As for who paid for the weddings, a Netflix spokesperson revealed to Women’s Health that production “supplies some of the basics, but because these are their real weddings, it’s up to them as to how to spend their money.” So the couples likely did have to cover some expense if they went over budget. 

    REBECCA BRENNEMAN/NETFLIX

    17. Despite some skepticism from viewers, the marriages are legit, with season one’s Lauren Speed telling Refinery29, “This is a real legally binding marriage. This is not for TV. This is our life.”18. It’s not random who goes first on the alter saying “I do” or “I don’t,” with Micah saying the production crew determines who goes first.”It’s not the officiant who decides,” Micah revealed. “In my opinion, they will ask whoever they think is more likely to say ‘yes’ to go first, because then they get a two [person] answer.”Otherwise, she noted, “you don’t have that chance of seeing the first person say ‘yes’ and having that shock.”

    Netflix

    19. So were the cast members obligated to make it to the altar? According to Coelen, they were not. “They certainly could choose to do whatever they wanted to do,” he told E! News of the wedding day decision-making process. “Again, being there on the wedding day, I personally, knowing these people and their stories, I didn’t know what was going to happen.”20. Then why do people wait until the altar to decide if they’re going to say yes or no? While contestants aren’t required to go through with the wedding day, there’s a reason many do, even if they ultimately say no.”In my experience, it wasn’t like you have to get to the altar, like you must get to the altar,” Micah shared on TikTok. “It was moreso being a part of the entire experience. The whole point of Love Is Blind is It’s an experiment. And you wouldn’t know if it’s going to work or not unless you do the whole thing. So that was the thought process there.”

    REBECCA BRENNEMAN/NETFLIX

    21. Why do so few couples say “I do”? After only one pair of contestants tied the knot in season eight, Love Is Blind executive producer Ally Simpson provided insight into why it’s getting more rare for couples to make it past the altar, admitting that social media has made it challenging to recruit “nice men” for the experiment. She also noted that former contestant Chelsea Griffin joined the casting team to help mitigate the issue. 

    Netflix

    22. There were rumors online that Mark Cuevas, the youngest single man in the inaugural season, secretly had a girlfriend when he was on the show, which he later denied. “I did not have a girlfriend the whole time,” he said on the Be There in Five podcast. “I was single before [going on the show]. Now, being a single man, you’re single, you’re doing your thing. I’d never had a girlfriend before. Where was the time to be in a relationship during the experience?”23. According toKelly and Kenny Barnes, they never had any plans to actually get married at the end of filming season one. “We were adamant about we’re not going to get married,” Kenny told People. “And really, the engagement was just to extend the experiment. And we were both committed to that.” And Kelly believed they were “going to continue dating, because that was communicated between us.” That was until Kenny admitted on the wedding day he was not “emotionally available” to do so. “I felt very rejected,” she admitted. “Like, ‘That wasn’t the plan. What the heck?'”

    Netflix

    24. Jessica Batten, LIB season one’s most polarizing cast member, claimed in an interview that she tried to quit the show but wasn’t allowed to.”I mean, I had to stay,” she told EW. “I definitely had a conversation about leaving and I wasn’t able to do that. My dog got sick too, and almost died during the show, I had so much other stuff going on.”She continued, “It was really frustrating because I kind of knew [Mark and I] weren’t going to get there. I definitely had some conversations and attempted to leave, but I wasn’t able to.”

    Netflix

    25. The season one weddings were actually filmed in the fall of 2018, meaning the two couples—Lauren and Cameron Hamilton, and Amber Pike and Matt Barnett—who actually decided to get married had to keep their relationships secret for 18 months before the show premiered. 

    Netflix

    26. Love Is Blind could go on and on for years, with Coelen telling E! News, “I’m thinking season 15” would be the last.27. Did Carlton Morton look familiar? Well, it’s because he’s been on an ATL-set reality show before, popping up on The Real Housewives of Atlanta when he was working as Cynthia Bailey‘s assistant back in 2014. Bravo fans will remember he got into a heated argument with Kenya Moore, who had just joined the series.

    Courtesy of Netflix

    28. Why does the show always have those gold cups? While fans have speculated the opaque cups help hide the amount of liquid in the glass to help with editing errors and cuts, Coelen said the goblets were chosen for aesthetics.”When you turn on the show, you know it’s our show,” he told Variety. “It’s a very authentic, really true following of these people’s journeys, but I like the fact that we have this sort of connective tissue with that in a really light way, it’s fun.”Deepti added to E! News, “We would always put all of our drinks in the gold goblets. It’s just a symbolic thing for us.”

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