My Anti-Wedding

Usually reality TV weddings are elaborate, wallet-busting affairs that are beyond the reach of most people (well, people who don't want to go into debt over one day). But on Sunday, Jan 25, TLC ran what could best be described as the anti-reality TV wedding. It was my own personal nightmare wedding.

It was called "A Very Duggar Wedding" and was focused on the wedding of 20-year-old Josh Duggar, the oldest of the 18 Duggar children to Anna, a Florida girl who he met while at a home schooling convention.

No, I'm not making this up. The Duggar family really does have 18 kids; 18 kids who are homeschooled, dressed similarly and broken of independent thought. Why yes they are fundamentalist Christians, however did you guess that?

Anna, meanwhile, is a Baptist and the wedding took place at her family's Baptist church. This, as her father happily told us, means that there will be no drinking or dancing at the wedding. He also informed us that all those wine references in the Bible are actually grape juice references. Now, it's easy to criticize the Bible but the one thing that it does have right is that people back then enjoyed their wine.

Now, these types of shows are always kind of creepy because you can't help but think, what kind of people are okay with a camera crew filming the lives of them and their children? But this show was extra-creepy because of all the emphasis put on "firsts". For example, Josh and Anna were going to share their very first kiss after they exchanged vows. We were told this fact some 20-odd times.

Much emphasis was also placed on the wedding night which was sort of treated like a dirty joke by some the family members while father Duggar give his son an instructional audio tape and a book that explained what one's wedding night should be like. It was made clear that the book did not contain pictures.

Oh, then there were the vows, such soul-crushing vows. Josh needed to promise to provide for Anna while she had to promise to follow his leadership because, as her father explained earlier, Josh is now essentially her owner. The couple also had to promise to leave reproductive issues in the hands of god. Because clearly the world needs more people who don't believe in evolution.

To be fair, while this clearly wasn't the wedding for me, Anna and Josh did seem very excited and happy about their wedding, as were Josh's parents. Anna's father on the other hand seemed more excited that he had the chance to educate TLC's audience about Baptists while her mother appeared not to be allowed to speak.

There was one aspect of their wedding that I did quite like. They were married at 7 pm and had most of their pictures taken before the actual ceremony. I'm in favour of this approach since then you are getting your pictures taken were you are looking your best. It also means that your guests don't have to wait around for hours between the ceremony and the reception. Shawn and I are planning on doing something similar, though we had this idea long before we watched "A Very Duggar Wedding".