EXCLUSIVE: The real reason Lachlan went on Married At First Sight, and where you've seen him before.

Newlywed in the house!

On Nine’s new show Married at First Sight, Lachlan, 36, is the sweet, straight-talking farmer who wants a wife. His bride, Clare, 37, is the marketing manager who has very particular ideas about flowers.

So far, all we know about their relationship is that they’ve had a commitment ceremony, a whole load of awkwardness, and probable drunken honeymoon sex.

In less ridiculous marriage news: Tonight, we are one gigantic step closer to legalising gay marriage.

Mamamia chatted with Lachlan about why he’s never settled down before, what it’s like to marry someone you’ve never met, and his previous brief foray into reality TV. Here’s what he had to say.

He found Clare “captivating” from the moment he saw her.

“I kept waiting to see who was going to walk down the aisle, and the two bridesmaids walked down first in white, and I was trying to work out which one was mine! They sort of sat and when [Clare] finally arrived I was quite captivated and just wanted to make a connection with her.”

He didn’t care the marriage wasn’t legal. It was real to him. 

“I approached it as a real marriage and that was the way I went into it. My family and friends went into it that way as well; I had a friend fly all the way from Seattle for the ceremony. I approached it as a real marriage and was hoping that whoever came down the aisle was ‘the one’. It certainly felt like a real marriage.”

Monique Bowley from Mamamia Out Loud Podcast spoke to show psychologist, Sabina Read and asked what all the contestants were REALLY like.

But the ceremony was ‘awkward.’

“When I was waiting down the end for Clare to come through and trying to make a connection with her I suppose, she wouldn’t look at me. It was definitely a little bit awkward.”

Until recently, he was nursing his sick dad. 

“I’ve recently lost my father to cancer, which was hard. I was living with him out on the farm where I grew up. In my younger years I had different relationships that didn’t work out for various reasons. In the past few years, it’s been more a timing thing, where I didn’t really have the opportunity to go out and meet someone new and start a relationship,” he said.

“After I’d lost [my dad] and had things under control on the farm and it had all settled down, the timing seemed right for me. [The show] was a way I could accelerate the whole process.”

He likes Clare’s cooking.

“Clare, she’s a great cook. She’s certainly a very good cook, very good in the kitchen.”

But they don’t live together. 

“The way it’s been, and the way it was early, was commuting back and forth from both places. They’re not too far apart and you can sort of have the best of both worlds,” he said, declining to say if this is still the situation.

If you think you’ve seen him on reality TV before, you’re right.

“I was briefly on one episode of MasterChef. They had some tradies and farmers and it was an episode where they had to cook vegetarian food and the theme was getting in six meat-loving men to like vegetarian food. We had to judge different meals they’d prepared.”

His friends have his back. 

He had two or three weeks to inform family and friends about his impending nuptials – and some of them were wary of his surprise marriage plan.

“Pretty much all of them were very supportive after getting over the initial shock, but I did have a couple of friends make sure I knew what I was doing. They were making sure I was doing it all for the right reasons and being protective of me,” he said.

He’s been watching the show.

“It was quite interesting watching it back and seeing some of the footage that I hadn’t sort of seen or been involved with,” he said, adding that hearing Clare talk about having kids didn’t scare him at all.

“I’ve always wanted, my whole life, to get married and have a family with kids so the fact that she’s on that same page with me was good.”

Relive Lachlan and Clare’s wedding day here (post continues after video):

He trusts the process.

“The more I got involved with the show and knowing what I had to go through in terms of selection process and interviews with the matchmakers and experts, it was all very comprehensive. That gave me the trust that whoever they selected for me went through the same process so I had a lot of confidence in the experts.”

This is what happened on Episode 1 of Married at First Sight…

Read more about the “social experiment” that is taking over our TV screens (and our lives).

Married at First Sight Ep 2: morning-after sex, the most awkward ceremony yet, and more…

Why the psychologist from Married at First Sight didn’t want to be part of the show.

Here’s what happened on the international versions of Married at First Sight.