Kaitlyn Bristowe’s season of The Bachelorette was one of the more dramatic in recent years (I can’t say “most dramatic,” because Chris Harrison claims that every season, and wow, do I not want to be Chris Harrison). At the end, it came down to Nick Viall and Shawn Booth, and considering the fact that Nick Viall is our newest Bachelor, I think you can guess Kaitlyn’s decision making — Kaitlyn left her season engaged to Shawn (and Nick got his heart broken for a second time on national television). But, now that several seasons have passed, what’s happening with Kaitlyn and Shawn’s post-Bachelorette wedding plans?
Kaitlyn and Shawn have always been a fairly untraditional Bachelor couple — they accidentally leaked their relationship status before show ended via a Snapchat of them in bed together, and boy, was it scandalous. I’m sure the producers were not at all happy. But Kaitlyn and Shawn seemed to shrug it off, and if you follow either of them on Snapchat now, Kaitlyn is taking videos of her dog, playing with filters, and making fun of how “geeky” Shawn is when he’s not looking. Read: They’re a very normal couple, and Kaitlyn and Shawn seem unfazed about the fact that their relationship is famous from reality television.
Where does this leave a wedding? It’s been over a year since the two decided to get hitched, so where are we in this process? According to E! Online, Shawn said in a recent interview that the couple hasn’t even started wedding planning yet, and that they’re just enjoying being engaged. That being said, Shawn did joke that he and Kaitlyn did think about eloping, but decided against it.
"We were in Vegas ... and we were like, ‘Let's just go get married at a chapel,' but then we'd probably get sued by ABC because they have the first rights,” he joked. “So yeah, we haven't started planning yet. We're just enjoying being engaged and things are great and if you follow us on social media, you'll see we're all over the place. We're on a plane, like, every three days."
If any couple wasn’t going to get married on television from The Bachelor franchise, I would have put my money on Shawn and Kaitlyn. She was such an untraditional Bachelorette that I would think she wouldn’t care about a big, nationally televised to-do. After Kaitlyn was voted in by her contestants (she was pitted against Britt Nilsson in the premiere) she quickly lost favor with many viewers when she decided to have sex with Nick Viall before the Fantasy Suite dates (The shock! The horror!), she was raked over the coals by the public, especially on social media. Why bother with putting her life on TV again after she was treated so terribly by some fans?
I could be reading too much into Shawn’s quote about eloping, but having the option of ABC covering the wedding could mean that Kaitlyn and Shawn are not just deciding when and where they’ll get hitched, but also deciding whether or not they want to get married on television. Is a Kaitlyn-and-Shawn Bachelor-palooza special wedding coming to ABC? We’ll just have to wait and find out. But, for now, at least they seem pretty happy just being engaged.
