Which ‘Love Is Blind’ Bride-to-Be Told Off Her Fiancé at the Altar?

Last week, Twitter had a few choice words for Love Is Blind’s resident square, MBA student Sikiru “SK” Alagbada—who decided at the altar that he could not marry pilates instructor Raven Ross. But as difficult as it was to watch Raven tearfully accept a hug from her fiancé’s disappointed mother, the moment pales in comparison to the emotional carnage of the finale Netflix debuted this Wednesday.

Some of this week’s outcomes (*cough* Nancy and Bartise *cough*) were somewhat expected. But one other wedding nearly rivaled Giannina Milady Gibelli’s runaway bride moment for sheer shock value.

Where to start, where to start? Well, there’s the cliffhanger from last week: Did Nancy Rodriguez and Bartise Bowden wind up tying the knot after that extremely long pause we left Bartise on last week? Readers, you’ll be simply shocked to learn that after weeks of telling Nancy, his friends, and every viewer at home that he’s not that into this relationship, Bartise said “no” at the altar after his fiancée’s “yes.”

Bartise might’ve rejected Nancy at the altar—after spending much of their relationship reiterating that she’s not his usual “type”—but it seems the man Reddit has named “Barfsneeze” still hoped he and Nancy could stay together.

After the ceremony dissolved, Bartise pulled his not-so-happy bride aside in the hopes of smoothing things over—at which point her family stepped in to give him a piece of their minds, even as Nancy begged them to back off.

“What I’ve gone through in the real world with you and with your family, and with everything we’ve talked about, there’s no way for me in my head that it makes sense to get up there and say ‘yes,’” Bartise said. Nancy’s mother and brother, meanwhile, refused to back down. Her brother insisted over and over that he hated being “right” about Bartise, while her mother insisted, “He’s not ready for who you are. Because you’re too much for him.”

When the couple finally managed to find time alone, Nancy told Bartise he’d “fucking gaslit me.”

“I was ready to marry you for who you were,” she said. “But at the end, it was you who wasn’t ready. For me it’s not, ‘Oh maybe it’ll work later.’ For me it’s like, no, I chose you and you didn’t choose me... I said yes and you said no. How is that not black and white?”

Somehow, that wasn’t even the wildest of the weddings—it was just the first. Next came Alexa Alfia and Brennon Lemieux, whose nuptials obviously went off without a hitch because in spite of their many obvious differences, these two really do seem pretty great together! And then came the big one, Cole Barnett and Zanab Jaffrey.

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It seemed obvious from the start that Cole and Zay’s wedding would be dicey, but the way in which this one fell apart is somehow especially confounding.

Cole and Zanab are one of those couples who seem to spend all their in-person time on Love Is Blind struggling to regain what they “had in the pods.” That usually chalks up to them “not knowing each other,” but as far as Cole was concerned just before their wedding, the two had made real progress—in spite of all the glaring signs pointing to the fact that perhaps their relationship was dysfunctional. As the groom told his friends, “We’re really good now. Even when we were arguing, we were always trying to work through something and get somewhere and make progress. I think a lot of our love story is we came full circle.”

Zanab, too, seemed to be feeling sentimental as she and her potential future husband prepared to saunter down the aisle. “The fact that I’m here and that Cole is here and that we did fall in love, I just believe God has had his hand in this every step of the way,” she said. “... I know I could have a happy life with Cole, but I need him on board with that.”

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“I think I’m honestly not gonna know until I look up and see Cole,” she added. “It’s gonna be in that moment, I think, that I’m gonna know everything I need to know.”

At the start of their ceremony, Zanab said a prayer—“because that’s what Cole and I bonded over”—in which she thanked God for having met him. She told Cole that before they saw one another, she fell in love with him because of the warmth she felt from him. When it came time for the vows, however, her tone began to shift.

“I think I have a really good idea about the type of woman that’s going to love you the way Cole needs to be loved every day for the rest of your life,” Zanab told her fiancé. “And I think you and I both know that is not me… You have disrespected me, you have insulted me, you have critiqued me, and for what it’s worth, you have single-handedly shattered my self-confidence. And I hate that you have had that effect on me.”

“The messed up thing is, I know I love you,” Zanab continued. “But everything in me, in the logical part of my brain, tells me that love shouldn’t feel this way. Love shouldn’t hurt like this. I can’t marry you, and I don’t.”

As the woman he’d thought he was going to marry walked back down the aisle away from him, Cole initially kept it stoic. After a few minutes, however, he began venting that Zanab had never said as much to him during their relationship; instead, he posited, she’d waited to do it in front of his friends and family because it would hurt him more. “That’s such a joke,” he said. “... She had me fooled, big time.”

“I knew we’re not perfect, but that?” he concluded with a scoff. “It’s one of the worst experiences of my life.”

Something tells me these two are going to have some very interesting conversations come reunion time.

Last but not least came Colleen Reed and Matt Bolton—the latter of whom fans have been calling out for weeks over his jealousy issues. (In all honesty, Brennon aside, the dudes of this season have been less than inspiring.) Still, it was an enthusiastic “yes” from both bride and groom—and afterward, a lot of “Holy shit’s!”

With all the champagne popped, rings exchanged (or rejected), and “I do’s” and “I don’ts” accounted for, it seems all that’s left is that sure-to-be dramatic reunion. Based on what we’ve seen this season, it feels safe to borrow a popular catchphrase from a certain other dating show and say this might just be The Most Dramatic Love Is Blind Reunion Ever.

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