For the Right Reasons (37 page)

During this time, Catherine decided to be baptized, which is when a believer is submerged in water to symbolize dying to oneself and coming up a new creation. This is a big act—a public declaration of faith—and I was touched that Catherine asked my dad to baptize her. She and Laura were baptized one Sunday, at my home church at Plymouth Park Baptist Church in Irving, Texas. It was a beautiful moment, and I was so glad to see Catherine growing in her faith. In fact, her enthusiasm for faith encouraged me in mine.

I never pressured her into becoming a Christian. She’s an independent woman with very strong ideas of her own. I also wasn’t heavy handed about the no-sex-until-marriage thing. It was
my
deeply held conviction. Over time, it became Catherine’s conviction as well, especially as she dug deeper into God’s Word.

I hated that reporters dragged her into conversations about it all the time. For example, about three months after the proposal, Catherine and I were on
Good Morning, America.
The “virgin bachelor” conversation had gone on for months, and I just wasn’t in the mood when I was asked about it yet again.

“Why do you think the media has asked so much about your decision to wait until marriage?”

“I guess it’s because it’s so uncommon these days,” I said. “My faith has been the center of my life for a long time, and it’s the center of her life as well, and that’s no secret. We are proud of that fact. We realize that it’s viewed as kind of being weird these days, but we are not going to shy away from it. We are unapologetic.”

It’s the first time I tried to put a period—even an exclamation mark—at the end of this conversation. This is simply how we felt we should live
our
lives, and we didn’t care what anyone else said or did. After I said, “We are unapologetic,” the
GMA
reporter moved on, which was a good thing. I was done. I wasn’t going to back down from it, but I had—finally—had enough.

I wanted Catherine to be able to sort through her feelings and beliefs without the glare of the spotlight. Sex is not a main aspect of our theology. Christianity is about God’s goodness and redemption. The desire of people in the media to focus like a laser onto one aspect was frustrating. I didn’t want to be an abstinence spokesperson, because Christianity is about so much more than that. I definitely didn’t want to push Catherine into that role. She’d changed a lot since she stepped out of the limo—and not just romantically. It was encouraging to see how Christianity had taken hold of her heart and affected all aspects of her life. I also appreciated how she read the Bible and went to church regularly—even with all the wedding details weighing heavily down on her.

Thankfully,
The Bachelor
provided the best wedding and event planners imaginable. Though I would’ve been just as happy to go down to the justice of the peace, I knew a big wedding ceremony was one way to commemorate the day’s significance. Catherine tried to include me in all the major decisions. She told our invaluable wedding planner, Mindy Weiss, “This is
our
wedding, not just
my
wedding.” When she wanted my opinion, I was happy to give it. But mostly, I let her have free rein.

We needed to make sure the people who would be attending in person would put us on their calendars. Instead of going with a traditional save-the-date card, we decided to show our whimsical side by using a photo of us wearing bear heads. Yes, our photographer took a picture of us wearing gigantic bear heads as we rode a tandem bike with a basket full of roses and tin cans trailing behind. None of this had any significance, other than we wanted to be goofy and original.

Our save-the-date card read:

“Lovers, friends, family and Jack Nicholson, please join Catherine Ligaya
Mejia Giudici and Sean Thomas Lowe & Hologram Tupac for the wedding of the century! Our love celebration will take place on the twenty-sixth day of the first month of the two thousand and fourteenth year since we started counting time. Reception to follow, so get ready for major tomfoolery & ballyhoo.”

When our friends got that in the mail, they knew they were in for a different type of wedding.

We also needed to figure out where to have the wedding. After considering Dallas and Seattle, we decided on the Four Seasons Resort Biltmore in Santa Barbara—an amazingly beautiful resort right on the Pacific Ocean. Because Santa Barbara has year-round sunny weather, we felt it would be the best option for the outdoor wedding we envisioned. We wanted our friends and family to be surrounded by flowers and the beauty of California. The music, we learned, was going to be provided by 2CELLOS, two famous young cellists whom Elton John described as “astonishing” and “exciting.”
⁸

Things were falling into place, but the guest list was tricky. Many people wondered whether the show asked us to invite certain people, but they didn’t. We were the ones who decided who would celebrate with us in person. Because the ceremony location didn’t have a ton of seating, we had to make some hard choices. There were people from my season of
The Bachelorette
whom I wanted to invite and people from
The Bachelor
whom Catherine wanted to include. Of course, we invited
The Bachelor
couples—Jason and Molly, Trista and Ryan, Desiree and Chris—as well as friends from
DWTS
—Andy Dick and Lisa Vanderpump, who brought her dog, Giggy. We invited friends from my hometown church—dear friends who also hosted a wedding shower for us—as well as close friends from Seattle. I laughed at the thought of the Texas evangelicals mingling with the Seattle hipsters mingling with the reality TV glitterati.

This was going to be fun.

There were major advantages to having the wedding with ABC. Catherine’s family is far-flung—they live all around the globe. When the show

graciously offered to pay for their travel, this enabled everyone to attend. Even Catherine’s dad was able to come and walk her down the aisle along with her mother. This was such an amazing development. I’d had the chance to meet him during filming of
DWTS
. He was in the States for a few days, so I flew out to meet him, had breakfast with him, and flew back to Los Angeles. Even though it was a short visit, I immediately loved the guy. Catherine was thrilled for him to be such a big part of the wedding, especially considering the fact that he’d lived so far away from her during her childhood. Plus, she was honored that her mom and sisters were there. Even though they had given me a hard time at the hometown visit, they were now very supportive of us. (When her mom heard I’d proposed, she called me and said, “You’ve always had my blessing!”)

Registering for gifts was a crazy experience, mainly because it seems weird to go through and tell people, “Hey, I want these plates, not those.” I guess it’s a good way to make sure you don’t end up with twenty-seven salad forks, though. It was fun thinking about setting up a home with Catherine. We registered for normal household items—dishes, silverware, pillows, and glasses—and gave people the option of donating to Micaela’s Army Foundation. I’m on the board of this organization, which honors the memory of Micaela White, who passed away from childhood leukemia, and promotes awareness of the need for childhood, adolescent, and young adult cancer research funding. I loved using our wedding to shine light on their incredible work.

Catherine asked twelve of her friends to be bridesmaids, which put me in a bind. I could only come up with nine groomsmen, and—I joked—one of them was my mailman! All kidding aside, it was wonderful to share this big day with people who had been with us through thick and thin. Here’s how we described them as our party:

The Best Man/Most Likely to End the Night Shirtless: Clay Silver

The Matron of Honor/Most Likely to Become “Cat Lady”: Crista Osher

Most Likely to Leave the Party by 10 p.m.: Brandon Higginbotham

Biggest Flirt: Monica Teal Giudici

Most Talkative: Jeremy Anderson

Biggest Bada—: India Giudici

Most Likely to Become a Billionaire: Kevin Tinkle

The Hostess with the Mostest: Shay Shull

Best Beard: Austin Eudaly

Most Likely to Shed a Tear Listening to Our Vows: Stephanie Nguyen

Tightest Game: Kyle Williams

Most Blunt: Laura Caperton

Biggest Metro: Andrew Shull

The Female MacGyver: Kristen Ramaley

Biggest Scaredy-Cat: Mark Melendez

Everyone’s Best Bud: Lesley Murphy

Best Dance Moves: Cole Reilly

Most Likely to Be Mistaken for a Mademoiselle: Corina Rochex

The Most ’Hood: Anna Micklin

Most Likely to Need Extra Pages for Her Passport: Rosa Hensley

Biggest Smile: Anna Sabey

The most delicious details, of course, were the wedding cakes. While the bride’s cake was a traditional layered cake, Charm City Cakes made my groom’s cakes look just like my dogs. Yes, I had two cakes that looked like a boxer and a chocolate lab, because Lola and Ellie have been so important to me. I thought it was a fun way to work in the dogs without having them be part of the ceremony—though it was a little weird to stick a fork in Lola and take a bite.

Catherine didn’t let me know anything about her wedding dress and made an effort not to speak about the dress in my presence. I picked out the wedding bands. During the show, I had selected a platinum engagement ring for Catherine. When it came time to pick wedding bands, we decided to do something a little different. Instead of going with the platinum bands, we got unconventional rose-gold bands. Neil Lane again did an awesome job. Though mine was plain, Catherine’s had 114 round-cut small diamonds. For the wedding, Neil also let Catherine wear twenty-carat diamond
earrings and a fifty-carat bracelet. He gave me platinum cufflinks—with ten carats worth of diamonds—to wear on the big day, along with four matching twenty-carat diamond shirt studs. That definitely wouldn’t have happened had we had our ceremony back home. This would mark the first time I wore diamonds and probably the last!

It seemed as though there were a million decisions to make. I felt like we’d waited forever for the big day. Then—suddenly—it was time for us to fly to Santa Barbara, check in to the Four Seasons, and do this thing.

We wanted it to be as much like a normal wedding as possible. However, there were telltale signs that this event would be different. Most weddings, for example, don’t have social media guidelines. We’d invited the whole nation to join us in this happy moment—and that meant people would tune in on television, comment about us on Facebook and Instagram, and of course, tweet about everything that happened. Bachelor Nation is the best fan base of any television franchise, and I was excited to share this moment with them. Our wedding happened to fall on the same night as the Grammys, and I wondered if Twitter might actually explode from all the excitement.

When our friends and loved ones arrived, they received a packet that included directions on exactly how to tweet. There were considerations, like hashtags (#BachelorWedding), handles (@SeanLowe09, @clmgiudici), and timing (anytime except during the ceremony itself). In normal weddings, it would be considered rude to pull out a phone and record the details for your friends. However, our guests were encouraged to share their experiences, impressions, and comments via social media. And wow—our fans, friends, and haters on Twitter obliged! People gathered for wedding watching parties, complete with cakes and flowers.