‘The Bachelorette’: First Bachelorette Trista Sutter Says Her Televised Wedding Was Scripted
The Bachelorette has become one of ABC’s biggest franchises with 24 seasons of The Bachelor, 16 seasons of The Bachelorette, and numerous other spinoff shows. Though the show does have some level of authenticity, fans over the years have wondered just how real certain aspects of the franchise are. Now, Trista Sutter, the franchise’s first Bachelorette has come forward and said that even parts of her wedding special was scripted.
Trista Sutter as the Bachelorette
Sutter, who was Trista Rehn at the time, appeared on the first season of The Bachelor. She finished in second place after Bachelor Alex Michel picked Amanda Marsh. She went on to be the first Bachelorette. During her season, she chose Ryan Sutter and the two were married in 2003.
Their wedding was turned into a three-episode special called Trista & Ryan’s Wedding and garnered over 26 million viewers. The two are still married and have two children together, Blakesley Grace Sutter and Maxwell Alston Sutter.
Storylines were created
Wedding specials have since become an integral part of the Bachelor franchise. When a couple meets on a Bachelor show, the franchise usually tries to broadcast the wedding as well.
On today’s episode of the LadyGang podcast, Sutter revealed that she found out that producers had been planning storylines for her bachelorette party and her husband’s bachelor party.
“One of the producers left their binder out — like, they forgot their binder somewhere and one of the people who was at the bachelor/bachelorette party picked it up and gave it to us,” she said. “It had, like, their characters — the stor lines for every person. They had all of our friends who were invited to the bachelor/bachelorette parties, and they had all their bios and probably some stuff that they interviewed about. I think they had titles like … ‘the villain’ or ‘the sweetheart.’”
And Sutter is sure that this type of preplanning is something that the producers still do.
“I know that it has been going on since my season, but that’s TV,” she said. “That’s what they have to do. The editors need to know who these people are and be able to pull certain clips from their ITMs (in-the-moments). It’s a TV show, it’s always going to be a TV show. It’s getting [to be] more of a TV show, I feel like, compared to how it was back in the day.”
Other ‘Bachelor’ televised weddings
After the Sutter’s wedding, Jason Mesnick and Molly Malaney got married in 2010. Their special Jason and Molly’s Wedding aired in the same year and featured performances by Gavin DeGraw and Jason Castro from American Idol.
Ashley Hebert and J.P. Rosenbaum’s special The Bachelorette: Ashley and JP’s Wedding aired in 2012 and garnered over 4 million viewers. The two recently announced that they were seperating.
Sean Lowe and Catherine Giudici were married in 2014. The two are still happily together and have two children.
Bachelorette season 9 couple Desiree Hartsock and Chris Siegfried were married in 2014 and are still together. Marcus Grodd and Lacy Faddoul became the first Bachelor in Paradise couple to get married. However, their wedding wasn’t actually legal. They had intended to fill out the paperwork when they got back to America but instead, Faddoul allegedly ghosted Grodd.
Tanner Tolbert and Jade Roper were the second BIP couple to get married and their ceremony was part of The Bachelor’s 20th-anniversary special. Evan Bass and Carly Waddell also met on BIP and got married on season 4 of the show. They now have two children together.
Chris Randone and Krystal Nielson were the latest BIP couple to get married. Their extravagant wedding was a focal point of season 6 of the show. However, they have since split.
