‘The Bachelor’ Rose Ceremony Tradition Came From This 1 Classic Rock Band
The Bachelor franchise is synonymous with roses, but why did the producers choose the rose? Chris Harrison has always said, “This is the final rose,” but what if he said, “This is the final necklace.” It doesn’t sound right at all. Fans are about to find out the meaning behind those roses.
‘The Bachelor’ rose ceremony initially had the women seated around a table
When Mike Fleiss came up with the idea for The Bachelor, he agonized over every minute detail. One thing the producers stressed about was how the rose ceremony would look.
“The original concept was that they would all be seated at a table,” Fleiss told The Cut. “The Bachelor would walk around and place roses in front of the girls that he wanted to stay. But it seemed dorky.”
Then the producers attempted to have the ladies sit on couches, but it didn’t look right. Another idea was to have them staggered on staircases.
“We thought, ‘Well, that looks like they’re singing in a choir,'” Harrison explained to the outlet.
The last idea was to have the contestants all standing in a horseshoe so the cameras could see everyone’s faces. Then the Bachelor would stand at a podium under an arch.
“It had this great formality,” Harrison said.
The symbol of the rose came from a classic rock band
When Chris Harrison recalls how the rose ceremony came about, he knew they were trying to find a symbol that made sense. They wanted the audience to look at the women and know immediately who was safe from elimination.
“There were massive discussions of, ‘What would a guy give a girl that is a token, that is something that’s visual?’ Would it be a necklace?” he recalls. “At the beginning, it was just a tool to differentiate people that had been picked from those who hadn’t on-screen.”
Creator Mike Fleiss always pictured the elimination involving roses.
“I like the Grateful Dead, and they have a lot of roses, and they sing about roses a lot, so maybe that was it?” he tries to remember. “It just seemed like a perfect symbol. I didn’t even consider anything else.”
How did the producers plan to have the Bachelor hand out the roses?
The Bachelor is full of rituals and traditions. The rose ceremony was created and has remained the same over 24 seasons. The lead takes excruciatingly long to hand out the roses because the director wants it that way. The Bachelor is not allowed to say a name until he gets the signal.
“The reason why you have all those wonderful shots of people perspiring and getting nervous is that literally what should take about 20 or 30 seconds, I would milk those moments for probably two or three minutes,” director Jason Carbone told The Cut.
The whole rose ceremony is drawn out on purpose.
“I knew that I needed to create drama, and the best way to create drama amongst ladies competing against the same gentleman is making them wait and making them sweat.”
