Laughs, tears. Arie Luyendyk Jr. and Lauren Burnham’s wedding ran the gamut, according to officiant Chris Harrison.
The longtime Bachelor host, 47, spoke exclusively to Us Weekly about his role in the Saturday, January 12, nuptials. For one, he did not take the opportunity to put his full comedic skills on display, though he was given free rein to “do [his] thing.”
“When you’re officiating a wedding, you’ve got to read the room, and so a little bit of funny goes a long way. This is not the time for a roast. That’s later when we do a toast or the night before when we’re all together. This is about honoring this couple and the sanctity of marriage, which is something I take very serious,” he explained to Us. “I wanted this to be beautiful for their family, for their friends, for Lauren and Arie when they look back on this, that it was a beautiful thing, and it’s not about me cracking jokes.”
However, Harrison could not let the couple, who met during season 22 of The Bachelor, get off unscathed. “There was one little funny moment, but it was an inside joke about the gender of their child, which we all thought was a boy for a while,” he recalled. “Turns out it’s a girl, but for the most part, it was just really sweet, which is all I wanted it to be, was about this loving relationship.”
Luyendyk Jr., 37, and Burnham, 27, exclusively shared the baby’s gender with Us on January 4.
A Bachelor Nation wedding would not be complete without a few tears either. “I didn’t think I’d get emotional,” Harrison told Us. “I usually don’t, but when she started walking down the aisle, it kind of hit me, and I think it’s because we spent this whole week together. … Just listening to them and watching them interact with each other and with the families, and time and time again, the same thing is said over and over, and that is they’re perfect together, they fit together, they complement each other, pretty much everybody saying the same thing in a different way.”
He continued: “When you see that and then you see her walking down the aisle, and Arie started getting choked up, and I was like, ‘Oh, crap.’ So I kind of lost it. I was like, ‘I can’t be choked up when I start this wedding. Got to be professional.’”
The reality TV mainstay said his decision to officiate the pair’s wedding was easy. “I love them very much,” he noted. “Arie and I have been very good friends for a long time, and I’ve now become good friends with Lauren, but just knowing them, knowing how great they are together, believing in them, it was a very simple yes.”
Burnham and Luyendyk Jr. got engaged in March 2018 during The Bachelor’s After the Final Rose special. The duo tied the knot in Hawaii.
