The original Bachelorette Trista Sutter knows a thing or two about getting married on TV, and she’s offering up some tips to The Golden Bachelor’s Gerry Turner.
“Just enjoy it,” Trista, 51, told E! News at KIIS FM’s iHeartRadio Jingle Ball on Friday, December 1. “Weddings are stressful, and weddings on television are even more stressful. So as long as you are focused on each other and come with intention, they’re gonna be great.”
Trista got engaged to her husband, Ryan Sutter, on season 1 of The Bachelorette in 2003. The couple tied the knot during a televised wedding special titled Trista & Ryan’s Wedding later that year. They went on to welcome son Maxwell, 16, and daughter Blakesley, 14.
Like Trista, Gerry, 72, made Bachelor Nation history as the first Golden Bachelor earlier this year. After weeks of building connections with multiple women, Gerry proposed to Theresa Nist during the show’s Thursday, November 30, season finale. Host Jesse Palmer announced during the show’s After the Final Rose special that the pair will wed during a live wedding special in January 2024.
Trista made a guest appearance on episode 4 of The Golden Bachelor to help Gerry, Jesse and upcoming Bachelor lead Joey Graziadei judge the contestants’ pickleball contest. She told E! that she used her time on the series to lend some words of wisdom to Gerry about navigating his multiple relationships.
“He was struggling a little bit, just, ‘I don’t know what to do,’” she explained. “And I said, ‘You need to find the person not necessarily that you can live with — of course, you wanna find somebody that you can live with — but you need to find the person that you can’t live without.”
Gerry mirrored her comments during his proposal to Theresa, 70. “I came to the realization that you’re not the right person for me to live with, you’re the person that I can’t live without,” he said before getting down on one knee.
Gerry’s happily ever after has been met with some backlash from fans, particularly when it comes to how he handled his split from runner-up Leslie Fhima. During AFR, Leslie told Gerry that she felt “blindsided” by him after feeling as though he confirmed to her that she was his final choice.
“I felt like a villain at times,” Gerry said of letting Leslie go on Good Morning America on Friday. When asked whether he felt as though he gave her “false hope,” he stated, “I really have no response to that other than, at that moment, that’s sort of how I felt.”
Leslie shared her side of the story on the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast on Monday, December 4, claiming that Gerry failed to keep promises he made to her during their private time in the fantasy suites. “He made plans with me for [the] future. He said kind of, like, ‘Save the date, this is what we’re going to do. I can’t wait for us,” she said. “[In] two more days, we’ll be done with this [and] be together, start our life.’ Did he say, ‘Will you marry me?’ in there, no, but he all but said that. I would’ve been happy with just, ‘I love you,’ but he took it to a different level.”
Trista, for her part, would love to see Leslie continue her journey for love as the first Golden Bachelorette. “She deserves her redemption story,” she told E! News, adding, “I think that everyone is going to rally around her if they sign her up for it, and we’ll all be rooting for her.”
The Golden Wedding premieres on ABC Thursday, January 4, 2024.
