Blumenort couple finishes season two of reality TV show

A local couple has completed filming their second season of the reality TV show, "Marc + Mandy: Home Edition".

Marc Atiyolil and his wife Mandy MacLaren, of “The Marc & Mandy Show”, have been hosting their home decor, health and wellness TV show from their studios in Blumenort for the past 10 years and decided last year to add a reality aspect to the portfolio.

Season 1 followed the couple’s journey of building the cabin of their dreams, sharing their adventure on television in a 4-part series called “Marc & Mandy Vacay Getaway”.

The couple tells us how things went.

“So, we built our cottage,” starts Marc,” and the big thing was we've renovated over the years, but we had never built.” Mandy adds, “Right from the ground up and there is a huge learning curve when it came to building.”

Now that the cottage is done and checked off ‘their marriage-bucket-list", they’ve decided to do it again.

“It's just like anything else, right?” starts Marc, “like when you have kids, you have your first one, and they're always the angel, you know? So, you tell yourself the second one, ohh, we can handle it. It's not gonna be a problem, and the second one is a little terror.”

Mandy adds, “And let me tell you, we definitely had some ups and downs and dramatic moments in Season 2 with building our house.”

Marc notes, “Yeah, we laughed. We cried. We argued on camera.” Mandy throws in, “And that was just the first day.”

The couple can laugh it off now, although there were several dramatic moments, with hospital visits and health issues.

Mandy says, “It was difficult. With the health issues I was dealing with, it meant that Marc was really shouldering the majority of the build.”

Marc shares that the couple wanted to be vulnerable with their audience.

"We wanted to show the behind the scenes, of the behind the scenes. So, with the Marc and Mandy Show, our viewers have followed us as we had our first child, Ella, and then Emily and, you know, through being parents and growing as a couple, the celebrating our 10th anniversary and just as our marriage, kind of bloomed and unfolded and evolved. And we've done a lot of laughing over the years. You know, we've joked about a lot of stuff, and we were thinking, why don't we show kind of the more vulnerable part of it.”

To which Mandy adds, “The life issues that we all deal with, right?” She continues, “But it wasn't just, you know, my health issues. Like, we had dramatics happen with the crew, and the trades as well. And because our camera crew was always on-site, and ready, we had to take 6 to 8 months of a building process and condense it into four half-hour shows.”

“So, yeah, it was an adventure for sure. And we’re still standing,” says Mandy.

“And so is the house,” adds Marc.

With their house now complete, the first episode of Season 2 of “Marc + Mandy: Home Edition” aired this past Saturday and can be viewed on multiple streaming platforms.

With files from Corny Rempel