Joy-Anna Duggar and her fiance, Austin Forsyth, are currently busy planning the next big TV event for the Duggar family, and Counting On fans are wondering how long they’ll have to wait for the couple’s wedding special to air on TLC.
In Touch Weekly recently reported that Joy-Anna Duggar, 19, and Austin Forsyth, 23, aren’t going to get married until October 28, which is Joy-Anna’s 20th birthday. If this turns out to be the case, it means that their wedding special would not air until the end of this year or sometime next year. It would also make Joy-Anna’s engagement far longer than those of her married siblings.
As Us Weekly reports, Austin proposed to Joy-Anna on March 3, so the couple would have to wait almost eight months to become husband and wife if they tie the knot at the end of October. This would be unusual because most Duggar engagements only last two or three months.
#JoyAnnaDuggar is officially engaged to Austin Forsyth! https://t.co/vH07brLmke pic.twitter.com/cfJ8vD3fmK
— BRIDES (@brides) March 3, 2017
Josh Duggar and his wife, Anna, started the trend of short engagement periods in 2008. Josh popped the question on June 23, and he and Anna got married on September 26. In an early episode of 19 Kids and Counting, Josh explained why he couldn’t wait longer than three months to wed Anna.
“I just want to make sure that we save our intimacy and all those things for marriage, so we’re going to make it short I think – definitely,” Duggar said, as reported by People. “It’s been a long time for me to try and wait and wait and wait. I wanted to go into a relationship knowing that there was going to be purity, there was going to be honesty and there was going to be a lasting commitment.”
Jill Duggar and Derick Dillard’s engagement period was also three months long.
“Once we knew we wanted to get married, we didn’t want to put off the wedding for a long time and provide a stumbling block for ourselves” Jill told Page Six of their decision to rush to the altar. “We purposed to save ourselves physically for each other within marriage (even our first kiss for our wedding day!), so we had a short engagement period.”
Jessa Duggar got married to Ben Seewald two months after he popped the question, and Jinger Duggar walked down the aisle with Jeremy Vuolo a little over three months after he got down on one knee.
Watch Jim Bob Duggar grill Austin Forsyth before he blesses Joy Anna’s courtship https://t.co/m6XgNOXytl pic.twitter.com/8gQBOVuiLM
— People Magazine (@people) February 27, 2017
The Duggars’ long history of short engagements makes the recent report about Joy-Anna Duggar’s wedding date seem highly suspect. It’s true that October 28 is the date listed on Joy-Anna and Austin’s wedding page on the Knot, but the couple likely picked a random date because they couldn’t create a wedding registry without one. According to a note on Joy-Anna and Austin’s Amazon registry, they have not made their real wedding date public.
“Our actual wedding date has not been announced yet!” Joy-Anna and Austin wrote.
If Joy-Anna Duggar has chosen to keep her family’s tradition of two- to three-month-long engagement periods alive, her real wedding date would fall sometime in May or June. The Duggar Family Blog reports that Jessa Duggar and Ben Seewald have speaking engagements booked for the weekends of June 17 and 24, so these dates are out. And according to the calendar for the Forsyth family’s business, Fort Rock Family Camp, they’ll be busy with family camps every weekend in June. The Forsyths also have a camp scheduled for the weekend of May 27, leaving May 6, 13, and 20 as the most likely possibilities for Joy-Anna and Austin’s wedding date.
Do you think Joy-Anna Duggar and Austin Forsyth will get married sometime next month? And what do you think of the Duggar family’s tradition of keeping engagement periods short to prevent pre-wedding hanky-panky? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
[Featured Image by Duggar Family/Facebook]