Now that three Duggar children are married, the Arkansas family has wedding planning down to a science (like pretty much everything else). In April 14’s 19 Kids and Counting special, “Duggars Say I Do,” the big brood shared their secrets to a struggle-free ceremony.
Before Duggar daughters Jill and Jessa said “I do,” there was a lot of planning involved before they could walk down the aisle. Here are the 6 steps to take to hold a Duggar-approved wedding.
1. Want to save money? Try reusing and borrowing decorations, and outfitting the groomsmen in suspenders and bow ties instead of traditional tuxedoes.
2. Put your family to work. There are 19 Duggar kids and two Duggar parents — make them prove their love to you by recruiting them for any and all wedding-related jobs.
3. Design your own invitations. You probably own or have access to a computer — use it!
4. Recruit volunteers. Jill and Jessa’s wedding planner, Sierra, said the Duggar family called in favors from fellow parishioners around the country. “t’s not just that they go to church with the Duggars, it’s that the Duggars have stepped in and helped them in some area of their life and they said, ‘How can we give back? Let us come help you.'”
5. Beware of in-law pranks. Forgetting the ring isn’t just something that happens in rom coms — when Jessa and Ben Seewald tied the knot, Ben forgot the ring for his bride and had Jim Bob retrieve it for him, only to find it replaced with a keyring. And when Josh married wife Anna, his ring bearer pretended to have forgotten it.
6. Hire a resourceful planner. After a freezer mishap melted all the ice cream prepared for the specially requested root beer floats at Jill’s wedding, Sierra recruited a new batch of volunteers and sourced 30 more gallons of ice cream to scoop into 3000 individual cups the morning of the ceremony.
19 Kids and Counting airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on TLC.