As anyone who follows G and I on Facebook probably knows by now, our episode of HGTV's My First Place finally aired last week - only 11 months after we moved into said First Place and 7 months after we wrapped up filming. That's right, we finished filming 4 months AFTER we moved into our house. That statement should give you some idea of how "real" our episode was.
In fact, the only real moment from our episode, and by real I mean they filmed it as it was happening live, was our closing. Even that was staged - especially G's "happy dance"... more on that later. Everything else was filmed after we found our house, and in most cases, after we had moved into that house. That's why you saw all of our stuff (clothes, bonfire pot, Aggie diplomas, and most obviously the Giffin floormat) in the house when we were supposedly seeing it for the first time.
I want to make sure everyone knows the way the story was portrayed on the show is not how it really went down. I will freely admit that I'm high maintenance, but I'm not THAT high maintenance. Of course I love the upgraded materials in our house, but I never imagined our first place would have all the upgrades that it does. And I definitely was not demanding that we buy a house with those things. Keep in mind that we found and bought our house before any of the shots of us looking for houses on the show were filmed. The producers saw the upgrades in the house we bought and then built the storyline around that. And for those of you I know personally, please know that I am not judging the tile floor, carpet or countertops in your house! The snobby comments portrayed in the show were either lines fed to us or us acting. I promise I am not as snobby as it appeared on the show.
A few things you should look out for in the show:
- You can see one of the weirder things we saw when we were actually looking at houses during the opening credits - a wood burning stove in Austin, Texas! Very, very strange. The house was beautiful, but the wood burning stove was just too weird for us. I'm bummed they didn't show us seeing that house on the show.
- Grady picking me up at the airport - probably the most awkward thing we filmed. Grady NEVER picks me up from the airport so that was just weird in itself!
- The first house they showed us looking at was one we never saw before filming. In fact, this was the LAST house they showed us for filming - we looked at it in January and the heat was off in the house. It was FREEZING and we were supposed to be seeing it around the same time as the rest of the houses - in the middle of the summer. We only spent about 15 minutes in that house total, just long enough to get me saying some snobby things about the kitchen and living room!
- When viewing the kitchen of second house you can see a water bottle in the microwave. Grady hid the water bottle in the microwave and pulled it out in the middle of filming later that day and us and the crew laughed hysterically. Probably one of those had-to-be-there moments, but it was pretty funny.
- The Giffin mat in our kitchen when we were "seeing the house for the first time".
- Our diplomas hanging in the office (our names are blurred out).
- Watch my outfit as we are in the master bath and the master closet - I'm wearing the same shirt but my skirt changes (we filmed on two different days and I accidentally left my original skirt in Houston at my corporate apartment when traveling for work).
- Watch the clothes hanging in the closet - they show our clothes, you'll see all the maroon, and then they show a different view and you can see a couple t.u. hats (those are the previous owners') and then it goes back to our clothes. Nice editing, HGTV.
- The dining room table covered with the ugly tablecloth is what we received for being on the show. It is beautiful, but they covered it because usually they show the gift at the end of the episode. We don't know why they didn't show it in our episode.
I hope you guys enjoyed the episode. All in all, being on the show was a long, tiring, embarrassing, and fun exerience. However, we will definitely never be on reality TV again! We are extremely, extremely blessed to have found our perfect house within our budget. Let us know if you're ever in the area and we'll give you a tour in person!
No comments:
Post a Comment