As “The Golden Bachelor” Gerry Turner and his final rose pick Theresa Nist tie the knot Thursday evening on live TV, the lovebirds are excited to share their marriage with the world after having to keep their engagement on the down low for months.
Between the filming of their engagement at the end of August and the finale’s ABC airing at the end of November, Nist kept the results of the season a secret from her sister — even after blogger Reality Steve revealed a spoiler ahead of the show’s conclusion.
“I have a sister who I wouldn’t even tell that we were together. She was at the hometown and she met him and it drove her out of her mind,” Nist told TheWrap in a recent interview. “Even when Reality Steve leaked it, I said, ‘You know, he’s not always right, you have to watch the show!’”
Turner and Nist’s live nuptials, which were announced during the finale of “The Golden Bachelor,” resulted from a collaboration between the couple, who knew they would soon be making their partnership official, and the show’s EPs, according to Turner.
“We knew that we were right for each other. We knew that we wanted to get married,” Turner told TheWrap. “In a conversation with the executive producers, we said, ‘This is going to be a happy ending for everyone — we plan on getting married.’ And then the conversation accelerated, like, ‘Maybe we could do something here.’ We were listening and what we heard sounded really good.”
Nist added that the outpouring of love for the couple from “Bachelor” nation also contributed to their desire to include the franchise’s fans in the happy ending to their love story.
“[The fans] were so invested in it,” Nist said. “We just felt we wanted to continue it in that same way. I felt like we would have been just dropping so many friends. It just feels right to be doing it this way.”
While ABC has provided a live broadcast and stacked guest list of both “Bachelor” staples attending the wedding alongside Turner and Nist’s family and friends — including a handful of women from “The Golden Bachelor” and former “Bachelorette” Charity Lawson — for the wedding, the couple said they were responsible for the more typical parts of wedding planning.
“Every single thing that goes into a regular wedding, that’s our responsibility,” Nist said. “It’s really been picking out cakes, rings, [the] wedding dress and tuxedo. The production side of it we’re leaving that to the professionals. It’s just really the regular wedding things that we’ve picked out.”
“The Golden Wedding” airs Thursday, Jan. 4, at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
