The Golden Wedding Had None of the Golden Bachelor Sparkle

The heavily produced “party” missed the real reason viewers loved Gerry’s season of the reality show.

As one of the many viewers of the “The Golden Wedding,” aka the live televised nuptials of Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist, our inaugural Golden Bachelor and his winning woman, here is my quick take: a totally depressing dud!

To be fair, my expectations weren’t high. As the air date approached I wondered what, exactly, would make a live wedding compelling television. Many viewers have little-to-no emotional investment in the actual couple, whom they do not know in real life. But even as I pondered, it did not occur to me that the wedding itself—the part with the vows, the rings, the kiss—would be mere minutes of the broadcast. I should have been smarter; these live events are all about cash—for the network, for the couple, for all members of Bachelor Nation in attendance, who seemed to make up a vast swath of guests invited to the event. (Host Jesse Palmer actually called it a “Bachelor Nation” wedding, as if the entire nation were there to get married to itself.)

So the lion’s share of the thing was actually red carpet–ish interviews with those famous-if-you-squint guests, many conducted by Golden Bachelor contestant Kathy Swarts, who referenced her desire for a drink so many times I lost count. Tucked into these was an embarrassing and cringe proposal between a former Bachelor in Paradise contestant and his girlfriend whom I’d never heard of, footage of a bizarre bachelorette party involving Theresa and other contestants (aka exes of Gerry’s), and not-so-elegantly placed plugs for Amazon’s “Wedding Registry” product where you, too, can peruse wedding gifts selected by Theresa and Gerry for their “Golden Registry.” (Be warned: These are not things they actually want but things INSPIRED by the things they want, which surely come diamond-crusted and for free by a variety of designers.)

I did find most of this scripted in the reality style, annoying, and boring, only broken up by an array of pharma ads of such variety I was impressed. (I still don’t know what most of the drugs ABC is hawking to its viewership actually do.) But really, what brought me down was how this extremely lame public event of a very private choice—to get married—put a pall on the delight of the entire season of The Golden Bachelor.

The joy of this iteration of The Bachelor—where the Bachelor himself was 71, and every woman over 60—was that everyone on the show just seemed more real. They had aches, pains, real heartbreak, tragedy in their pasts, hearing aids, flatulence, deep senses of humor and selves. All of this gave the show a sense of authenticity that so many reality shows lack, inside and outside of Bachelor Nation. Gerry was the perfect, kind, nearly blank canvas for the woman to shine in contrast to him, and getting to know them was real joy. The show found new life in older people, and charmed so many of us who had tuned out of Bachelor Nation ages ago.

The live wedding, however, was both a broadcast and event that didn’t feel tailored at all to a couple having a second wedding. This is a couple where both people are over 70, a couple who would be free, in real life, to make choices outside the conventional—like, say, a more intimate ceremony without a bunch of strangers in attendance, or a non–Badgley Mischka–designed dress that seemed to wear the bride. (I much preferred the Nordstrom-available number Theresa wore at the finale.) I’m sure Gerry and Theresa made bank. And they got those free Neil Lane rings, presented by the man himself! But putting their vows on air for all to see, in an exceedingly conventional set up, burst the bubble many of us were inside with this show, which is that we were seeing something a bit realer than we usually do on TV.

But at the end of the day, The Golden Bachelor is just another part of the Bachelor franchise, and a reality TV show like all the others. It will produce spon con and influencers (Kathy? Who else?). Gerry and Theresa will pop up here and there to share updates on their love. (I’m deliberately not putting that in quotes because I really do think they love each other and will have a great life together, whether for an hour or 20 years, as Theresa might say.) At some point, we will get another Golden Bachelor or, even better, the first Golden Bachelorette (Faith? Leslie?). And I’ll watch again. But I’ll also hope the novelty of the concept will have worn off enough that we don’t get another live ‘golden wedding,’ and that the next two senior citizens who find each other on the show can just drive off in their old Honda or whatever and live out the rest of the lives with the thrill of authenticity we want to believe so badly is actually real, not merely produced for television.