Bringing Up Bates"The Bates Royal Wedding Celebration"
- “Our goal is for our children to be morally and spiritually and emotionally pure when they get married,” shares Gil. “We have chosen a route that we didn’t even know about when we were growing up. There’s a lot of names for it, dating with a purpose or courtship, but we don’t do the traditional dating.”
- Zach and Whitney relive their proposal: Zach surprised Whitney with a surprise trip to Florida, where he surprised her on the beach with flowers, a candlelight dinner, and, of course, a ring.
- Chad proposed to Erin under a gazebo after taking her on a ride through a park in a horse-drawn carriage. He pulled out a ring and popped the question: “Erin Elise, will you marry me?” They both cried and hugged. “Erin, she was the highlight of it all,” says Chad.
- The Paines also look back on their wedding, which was the first on both sides of the family. They show photos, although they don’t show scenes.
- After her engagement, Michael bravely allowed some of her brothers to tag along. Lawson and Nathan have different opinions when it comes to telling a lady how she looks. Lawson shares his: “If the girl ever comes up to you and says, ‘How does this look on me? What do you think?’ Wonderful, beautiful, perfect.” Nathan, on the other hand, says, “I’m an honest man. If it don’t look their best, I’ll just kind of say, ‘That’s not your best.’”
- John and Alyssa met at a mutual friend’s wedding after Alyssa got to know John’s brother on a mission trip to Romania. They fell in love while Alyssa, Tori, and Lawson were helping John’s dad campaign for Congress.
- Alyssa admits that she was extremely nervous for her wedding. “He’s going to raise another Alyssa,” she joked to her dad just before walking down the aisle. Afterwards, she described it as “absolutely blissful,” and told the camera that John cried quite a bit.
- “We’ve got a lot of excitement around, a lot of things happening, a lot of kids changing,” says Gil.