From Farmer Zac’s flower picking day with Miranda, to Farmer Alex and Gabby’s destination-inspired Spanish meal, Farmer Wants a Wife (FWAW) is known for its creative romantic dates — but who actually comes up with the ideas?
While the Ladies are often captured on camera complimenting the Farmers on their extravagant dates, 2025 Farmer Corey Manwaring has shared that the Farmers actually don’t have much to do with it, and said it’s mainly left in the producers’ hands.
“I think the most I did was actually put the hay bales in the shed for Keeley‘s and my date on the first 24 hour [date]. I think that’s about it. So like all the lighting, all the smorgasbord, all that sort of stuff… All that sort of stuff’s all done by production.”
Corey said that producers would ask them ideas for the dates, but most of the effort came from the producers.
“They’ll ask you ideas, like, I’d give them a list of things to do, like, you know, a date in the shed, or, like, we had the dated at Lachey’s sort of thing. I’d give them that idea, and take them and show them the spots, and then they bring it all to light.”
Corey’s winner, and now girlfriend, Keeley Rankin, told Chattr that she watched producers set up an entire date for her.
“I think like a way to show how much or how little they do is I was sitting in the car waiting for that first 24 hour date, and I sat in the car for a long time while they set that up, and I saw Corey moving a few hay bales around.”
“Then I watched our producers put together the entire like setting, put all the lights up, the cheese platter [out]. And then I had to walk in and be really excited that Corey had set it all up for me. And I think they made me re-film it because I wasn’t excited,” she laughed.
How long do the Farmer Wants a Wife dates take to film?
While Keeley’s recount of waiting around for producers to set up her date sounds unromantic, she said there’s even more happening behind the scenes than makes it to air.
“The dates, they take a long time to film, and they show maybe two minutes of it on TV…. They’ll film you doing your date authentically, and they’ll kind of give you some prompts every now and then. It might take an hour to film you sitting down with, like a cheese board or something, yeah, maybe a bit under 40 minutes to an hour,” she began.
“Then after you’ve done that, the date where it’s supposed to be more natural, then you have to basically repeat the dates, try and say the same kind of things as what you’ve said, to get different camera angles. You end up filming the same date up to three times.”
Keeley said it can get monotonous reenacting the date so many times, adding that sometimes she’d start to get bored and zone out.
“That’s where they start to, I think, get these funny facial expressions and like, these phrases that aren’t quite what you meant to say because you’re trying to remember what you said. So [the dates] take hours. And, if it’s a full day date, it takes the full day even though it looks like it’s quite short.”
Farmer Wants a Wife airs Sunday – Tuesday on Channel 7 and 7Plus.
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