'Tori's Winter Wonderland Wedding' Recap

Bringing Up Bates "Tori's Winter Wonderland Wedding" 

• A few days before the wedding, Tori and Bobby meet at their future residence, an apartment where Bobby is already living, to pack for their honeymoon. They will fly to San Francisco, driving to Carmel, and then head to Yosemite to spend time in a beautiful cabin.
• Meanwhile, Gil and the boys start spray painting the trees, but the paint doesn’t stick. “This is called a lesson about procrastination,” declares Kelly. “Last week, the weather was warm, and last week, the paint would have stuck, and the trees would have dried. This is the whole theme of the wedding right here in this yard. Y’all have to do better than this.”
• Elijah, a friend of the Bates, solves the problem with a paint sprayer. “Y’all get a bonus for this job,” says Gil.
• Michael arrives from Chicago, and Kelly puts her to work adding slips to the flower girl dresses.
• On Friday, the day before the wedding, family and friends are at the church decorating. Bobby’s family arrived the night before and is busy setting up for the rehearsal dinner, at which they will serve Mexican food. Tori decides to do the dinner first so the rehearsal isn’t delayed by wedding party members arriving late.
• When Tori and Bobby see the finished sanctuary, they are tickled. “I feel like I’ve poured so much into this wedding emotionally, so it meant a lot to me to make this just perfect for her,” says Kelly.
• It wouldn’t be a Bates rehearsal dinner without tears and sweet words. Carlin admits that she is a little jealous because she would like to switch places with Tori. Gil stands up to protest, with a smile on his face. “Wait a minute! Whoa, whoa! One at a time!”
• In the words of Josie, “The rehearsal was chaos.” But with such a large wedding party, that’s almost a given.
• On the morning of the wedding, Tori says she is scared, nervous, and excited. While she has her hair and makeup done, others run around making final preparations. The time comes for her to unveil the dress to her bridesmaids and some family members.
• Bobby puts on a blindfold so he and Tori can pray together before the ceremony.
• The guests are all seated, the wedding party has entered, and it’s time for Gil and Tori to walk down the aisle. “She’s walking to me, and we’re about to start the rest of our lives together,” says Bobby. “It literally felt like the entire world just stopped.”
• When the other pastor asks Gil who gives the bride away, Gil responds, “Her lovely mother, myself, and all of her 18 siblings.”
• After the sermon, Bobby sings a love song that he wrote for Tori, while playing the piano. “And the rest of our lives begin here today, but I just want to stay right here with you. Wherever we go, come whatever may, we’ll never forget these promises. Like two notes on a page, just follow my lead. You know that I’ll take us where we need to be. Keeping this love within, our song never ends.”
• During the couple’s vows--which are the traditional ones, lead by Gil--Tori stumbles over the words “lawful wedded husband.” After that, Tori starts laughing uncontrollably, although some members of the audience think she is sobbing, and she becomes embarrassed and is concerned that she’s messing things up. “This is your day,” Gil assures her. “You’re not doing anything wrong.”
• “The whole wedding, I was just honestly trying to make everything so perfect and do everything so perfect,” says Tori. “It’s just not me to be perfect.”
• While Tori and Bobby tie their unity braid, Lawson performs a song that he wrote for them, accompanied by Rachel Leftwich, Andy Leftwich’s wife. “We’re not in this thing alone. We won’t get it right on our own. It’s gonna take help. It’s gonna take faith, but with you and God and me, one plus one equal three.”
• Before they know it, Tori and Bobby are sharing their first kiss, and it’s slow and sweet just like the bride wanted.
• During the reception, Gil announces the bouquet toss, adding a plea. “No Bates kids, please. No more Bates kids for a couple years. Give me a break.” Josie ends up catching it!
• “It seems like as soon as we recover from one wedding, another daughter is announcing a wedding date,” says Kelly. “We’re happy for Tori, we’re happy for the future of our other girls, but we are praying it will slow down.”

'Countdown to I Do' Recap

Bringing Up Bates "Countdown to 'I Do"

• Kelly, Tori, and all but three of the bridesmaids make one last trip up to Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, for a final dress fitting at Renee’s Bridal.
• Renee Miller unveils the completed wedding dress, and everyone loves it. “That’ is the most beautiful dress in the world,” says Kelly, who was not a huge fan of the gown before the alternations. “The bling is so awesome,” says Tori. The bridesmaids who are present try on their dresses, and they look great.
• Back at the Bates house, Gil and the boys cut down small trees to decorate the sanctuary.
• “When a girl gets married around here…it’s a family project,” says Gil. The guys are all a little unsure about what Tori and Kelly want, so it’s a bit of a guessing game. They think they have it all figured out, until Kelly returns. “That’s kind of scrawny,” says the mom of 19, looking at one of the trees that was cut down. “It’s gotta look like a tree, big tree, fluffy tree.”
• Six days before the wedding, Kelly takes a few trees to the church to see how they look. “If this was any wedding except for a Bates wedding, I would say we are way behind,” says Kim Nafziger, friend and wedding planner. “But because this is a Bates wedding, this is kind of typical.”
• Erin, Chad, and Carson visit Dr. Vick’s office for an ultrasound. “I’m going to hold her hands,” says Carson, when he sees his baby sister on the screen.
• Dr. Vick gives Erin a clean bill of heath. “16 more and you’ll be there,” he jokes.
• “Every time, I say this is my last,” says Erin. “I don’t know what happens. I’ve gotta stop looking at newborn babies. I think three strikes and I’m out.”
• During a lunch break at work, Bobby works on honeymoon details. He and Tori are planning to go out west to the Yosemite area. Bobby admits he has never planned a vacation or seen a significant amount of snow.
• Kelly gathers the planning team and drops a bombshell. She is having laser surgery to correct her vision as a 30^th anniversary present, and she is considering having the procedure four days before the wedding. Kim is very uneasy.
• After seeing the doctor, Kelly ends up deciding to wait on the surgery. The doctor says Kelly’s thin cornea will require a type of laser surgery that has a 4-5 day recovery.
• Carlin does a hair trial for Tori’s wedding. “Are you putting your hair in a bun?” asks Nathan. “On your wedding day, you never put your hair up or in a bun. You leave it down.” Tori wants an updo because she doesn’t want her hair to take away from her dress.
• Nathan holds to his opinion. “At the end of the day, a girl is going to look her very best when her hair is down. Now up hair is great. There’s times for that. There’s times to wear buns. Hey, there’s times to wear your hair in a shower net, but your wedding is not one of those days.”
• To celebrate their anniversary, Gil and Kelly enjoy a romantic dinner at The Old Mill Restaurant in Pigeon Forge, which is where they spent their honeymoon. “This was a really needed break,” says Kelly.
• One week before the wedding, Lawson plays a Christmas charity concert. In the middle of the show, Nathan jumps up on stage and invites his parents to join him. He gives them flowers and tells the audience how dedicated his parents have been to each other and their children over the years. Lawson and Carlin sing one of Lawson’s original songs, “I Will Always,” for Gil and Kelly, who are incredibly touched.
• “My life was mapped out different in my mind 30 years ago,” shares Kelly. “I was very much going to be the career woman, and I wasn’t going to have children for at least five years.” The mom of 19 says she wouldn’t have chosen the life that she is now living but that she couldn’t imagine anything better.

'Another Beautiful Season of Blessings' Recap

Bringing Up Bates "Another Beautiful Season of Blessings"

• As the show opens, the Websters and Zach and Whitney are sitting on the porch at Papa Bill and Mama Jane’s house in Honea Path, South Carolina, waiting for the rest of the family to arrive for Thanksgiving.
• Is Gil’s mom ready for the chaos? “I don’t think you ever get ready,” says Mama Jane, chuckling. “Having Thanksgiving here with all the children, it really is a wonderful thing. I know the children love it, and I know they want to keep coming, but I don’t know how much longer I can lift that turkey.”
• Papa Bill needs help building a barn, so the Bates guys get to work immediately. “I like to see them working together…but I don’t stay long because I get a little bit nervous,” admits Kelly. “I’m just seeing an accident waiting to happen.”
• The guys are hoping to finish the project before they leave. “My family, we love to help,” says Zach. “We can bite off a great project and leave you hanging right in the middle of it.”
• Kelton pulls Evan aside and asks for pointers, as he is planning to seek Gil and Kelly’s permission to court Josie.
• “During our building project, we had some other people competing for our workers,” says Nathan. “Every few minutes, I’d see some little pretty girl walking over there, like one of my sisters…and off they go.”
• Meanwhile, the ladies and kids pick pecans, a Bates family Thanksgiving tradition. They also help Mama Jane make brownies. “Mama Jane has a reputation for being quick to fuss about people being in her kitchen,” says Kelly. “She likes a clean house. But deep down, she loves the kids being there.”
• The following day, Alyssa and Whitney help Mama Jane with supper. Mama Jane asks Alyssa if she’s following in her parents’ footsteps with a baby every year. “This might be the end,” says Alyssa. “Jane, I ain’t having 19 kids. This body needs time to heal.” She also says that she definitely plans to stop if she ends up with four girls. “It’s the drama,” says Alyssa. “I can’t handle it.”
• At lunchtime, the ladies bring food to the workers. “I don’t like to stop work for many things, but I’ll stop anything I’m doing for food,” says Zach. While they eat, the engage in a competition to see who can climb a big tree in the least amount of time.
• “There’s all levels of crazy, and the Bates crazy is on the top level,” says Nathan.
• In the midst of all the chaos, Gil and Kelly sit down with Josie and Kelton for a relationship check-in. “We definitely feel like God is leading us toward the courtship,” says Kelton. He wants to ease into it and asks for permission to make it official around New Year’s.
• Josie and Kelton have been talking for three years, but when things started getting serious early on, Gil asked Josie if she would be okay with “putting the breaks” on the relationship until she got a little older. They ended up taking a break, but Kelton stuck around, and it has been about a year since they got back together. Gil and Kelly grant their permission for the couple to court.
• After the barn is finished, the guys play football (another Bates family tradition). When Mama Jane calls everyone in for supper, they sit down and share what they are thankful for before eating. Gil gets emotional: “I just thank the Lord for getting to grow up here, for my mom and dad and all they did to invest in me, to have a brother like Greg, a sister like Jenny. And I’m just grateful that Mom and Dad are still here, and praise God we get to all be together as a family.”

'Beach Blanket Bachelorette' Recap

Bringing UP Bates "Beach Blanket Bachelorette"

• A few weeks before Tori’s wedding, Kelly and her daughters (minus Whitney, who isn’t able to make it) check into a vacation rental on an island on the Gulf. Carson joins the ladies as the only guy. “I just could not stand to leave Carson behind,” says Erin. “Me and him are like inseparable. We do everything together.”
• During their first excursion, a boat ride, the Bates are thrilled (literally jumping for joy) to see dolphins.
• Later, they go for a walk on the beach. After seeing tons of jellyfish lying in the sand, no one wants to go swimming. The adults sit on blankets so the kids can play. The married daughters offer up marriage advice for Tori. “It’s survival of the fittest,” says Alyssa. “There is no advice. It’s, do your best to survive.”
• Tori shares the details of her apartment, which is two bedrooms and almost 1,000 square feet. Kelly considers that to be huge, given that she and Gil lived in an 800-square-foot house with eight kids. When they were first married, Gil and Kelly could fit all their things in a small closet.
• Next on the agenda is painting sand dollar ornaments at a local boutique. Tori, who says she isn’t artsy, sits this one out. “One thing I’m learning from this is that art was not my talent,” says Kelly. Josie paints a Volkswagen hippie van on her sand dollar. 
• After their art project, the ladies get ice cream. “Everybody in the family knows, Katie’s biggest love is ice cream,” says Kelly. “She tells her sisters, ‘Y’all get your boyfriends. I’m going to stick with ice cream.’”
• That evening, everyone gathers back at the beach house to give Tori some personal care items, including plenty of lotion and perfume, with which the sisters say Tori is obsessed. 
• Back in Tennessee, the younger guys help Bobby move his belongings from the camper into the apartment that he and Tori will share once they are married. “Man Bobby, you have a lot of stuff,” remarks Judson.
• Gil, Lawson, Nathan, Bobby, and Kelton spend an evening at Veloce indoor go-kart speedway. The go-karts are able to reach speeds of up to 50 miles-per-hour!
• Kelton ends up winning. “The plumbing man brought home the trophy,” says Nathan. “Kelton drives a plumbing van every day from house to house doing service calls. Unbelievable.”
• During the commercial breaks, viewers go behind the scenes with the Bates. Gil and Kelly introduce everyone to executive producer Matthew Hightower, as well as the rest of the crew.
• Matt interviews the family about the show:
• “I never though it would make it through the first season, much less, here we are looking at shooting the eighth season,” admits Gil.
• “When we heard that [UP’s] goal was to be uplifting and encouraging to other families, we said, ‘That’s something we can support,’” says Kelly. Matt reads comments from viewers about how much the show means to them, and the Bates are touched.
• Matt asks Chad, Whitney, and Bobby what it was like to marry into the Bates family and become a part of the show. “I still…don’t think I’m comfortable around cameras, but it’s definitely an experience, and we’ve had a lot of fun doing it,” says Chad.
• Matt sits down with Lawson, Carlin, Josie, and Katie and talks about what they think of filming relationships that may or may not end in marriage. The kids say they knew when they agreed to do the show that all of that would be fair game. 
• “If y’all are down for 100 more episodes, so are we!” says Lawson. “That’s up to the viewers.”

Accessing My Duggar Blog

Good morning! Many of you also read my blog on the Duggar family, DuggarFamilyBlog.com. Over the past week, I have been making some updates on that blog, and some readers have been unable to access it. Please let me know if you are still unable to access. (You can leave a comment or email me at DuggarFamilyBlog@gmail.com.)

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~Ellie