Traditional Marriage Enthusiasts Rejoice: The ‘Golden Bachelor’ Wedding Will Be Televised

By Emma Chance | TV | December 1, 2023 |

By Emma Chance | TV | December 1, 2023 |

As seasoned Bachelor Nation fans know (I hesitate to include myself in that group, but here we are) very few Bachelor and Bachelorette couples, despite getting engaged at the end of the show, get married. Bachelor in Paradise currently holds the highest record of weddings, and a bunch of them in the last year.

But The Golden Bachelor is going to change that, come hell or high water. Gerry Turner proposed to his winner, Theresa Nist, on last night’s finale, and ABC will broadcast the big day live on January 4, 2024.

Suddenly it all makes sense. This is the reason we’ve had retirees romping around on our screens every week for so many weeks: so the Bachelor producers could prove, once and for all, that it works; putting a bunch of horny strangers in one mansion and basically saying, “Go kiss that nice man over there and in a few weeks one of you will get to marry him,” works. Because that has always been the problem with the whole Bachelor experiment: it’s supposed to end in marriage. Marriage is the goal, and for the past handful of years, the casts have been getting younger and less interested in marriage. Or, less interested in marrying someone they met a few weeks ago who was dating other people up until a few days ago.

The last time a Bachelor wedding was televised was the 2014 nuptials of Sean Lowe and Catherine Guidici, who were famous for their shared faith and for waiting until the wedding night for a traditional consummation. Those two loved the idea of marriage. This is what works in the Bachelorverse: bible thumpers and old folks, because at the end of the day, this is a franchise that espouses traditional family values. Even Paradise, where they send the youngsters to date a bunch of people at once instead of all fighting over one person, ends in marriage or nothing. Sometimes couples leave as boyfriend and girlfriend (because gender is binary and sexuality not at all fluid on this beach), but those couples either break up a few months later or get married.

These. Shows. Want. Weddings. The only people who love weddings more than Bachelor producers are old people who need someone to arrange for their hospice care when the time comes. As Gerry himself said: “We don’t have a lot of time to waste.”