Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist’s wedding was the first televised wedding of a Golden Bachelor couple—but it was also a real family ceremony shaped by children, grandchildren and the practical challenges of staging a live television event. They married on January 4, 2024, at La Quinta Resort & Club in California. They later announced their divorce on April 12, 2024, so this is the story of their televised wedding, not an ongoing marriage.
Golden Wedding: Quick Facts
- Date: January 4, 2024
- Location: La Quinta Resort & Club in La Quinta, California, near Palm Springs
- Television special: The Golden Wedding, a two-hour live ABC broadcast
- Planner: Mindy Weiss
- Officiant: Susan Noles, a former contestant from Gerry Turner’s season
- Bride: Theresa Nist, wearing a Badgley Mischka strapless mermaid-style gown
- Attendance: Approximately 150 guests, including family, friends, former contestants and more than 50 Bachelor Nation personalities
Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist’s January 2024 wedding was both a family celebration and a major television event. The couple married at La Quinta Resort & Club in La Quinta, California, in the first televised wedding of a couple from The Golden Bachelor. ABC broadcast the ceremony live as the two-hour special The Golden Wedding.
The production was designed to look warm and personal rather than like a conventional reality-show finale. Turner and Nist said they wanted to concentrate on their families and each other, even with cameras documenting the day. That balance—an intimate wedding surrounded by a large television operation—shaped nearly every part of the event.
How Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist’s wedding came together
Turner and Nist became engaged during the November 30, 2023, finale of The Golden Bachelor. Their wedding followed only a little over a month later, creating an unusually compressed planning schedule for a large, televised ceremony.
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Celebrity wedding planner Mindy Weiss worked on the event’s planning and design. Nist said that her daughter helped develop a vision board, with flowers and music among the most important elements. The result incorporated floral arrangements, drapery and candles at the resort, giving the ceremony and reception a softer, more traditional wedding atmosphere.
Family involvement was central from the start. Rather than treating the wedding as a production built around the television couple alone, the design and ceremony gave prominent roles to their children, grandchildren and in-laws. Turner and Nist had also described their blended family as unusually close before the wedding. Their daughters communicated regularly and had begun referring to one another as sisters.
Reports from a local source quoted by Life & Style said the bride and groom prepared in separate resort bungalows before the ceremony. That detail should be treated as an insider account rather than an official ABC production statement. The arrangement nevertheless fit the traditional decision to get ready apart while spending time together elsewhere at the resort.
A family-centered ceremony
The ceremony included a string quartet and a processional built around the couple’s family. Each participating child or grandchild reportedly walked down the aisle to a selected song. Theresa walked with her son, Tommy Nist.
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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteSusan Noles, who competed during Turner’s season of The Golden Bachelor, officiated. She brought the franchise’s characteristic humor to the ceremony, joking about marrying the couple even though Turner had not selected her on the show.
Turner and Nist exchanged emotional vows focused less on a television fairy tale than on companionship, family, mutual support, laughter and the prospect of enjoying the rest of their lives together. Their speeches made the joining of two families as important as the romantic story that viewers had watched on ABC.
Turner’s daughters, Jenny Young and Angie Turner, gave a tribute during the ceremony. Nist’s daughter, Jen Woolston, also addressed the couple, emphasizing the way Nist had become part of Turner’s family. Those appearances reinforced the wedding’s central theme: the couple were not simply getting married on television; they were publicly presenting a blended family.
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Who was in the wedding party?
The wedding party was made up primarily of the couple’s relatives.
- Jen Woolston served as maid of honor.
- Angie Turner, Jenny Young and Amanda, Turner’s daughter-in-law, served as bridesmaids.
- Payton and Charlee, Turner’s granddaughters, served as junior bridesmaids.
- Rob, Turner’s son-in-law, served as best man.
- Dempsey, Leo, Brandon, Brody and Braxton, Nist’s grandsons, served as groomsmen or junior groomsmen.
- Henry, Nist’s youngest grandson, served as ring bearer.
- Tommy Nist walked his mother down the aisle.
The roles helped keep the event grounded in the family’s own relationships. The former contestants and celebrity guests were visible, but the ceremony’s most important participants were the people connected to Turner and Nist before the television show.
Theresa Nist’s Badgley Mischka wedding dress
Nist wore a white, strapless Badgley Mischka mermaid-style wedding gown with a veil decorated with small pearls. She chose the dress with help from her daughter Jen, Turner’s daughters Angie and Jenny, daughter-in-law Amanda, and her Golden Bachelor friends Kathy Swarts and Susan Noles.
The fitted silhouette and pearl detailing gave the look a classic formal-wedding feel, while the strapless neckline and mermaid shape created a more dramatic television-ready outline. The dress was not presented as a costume or a franchise prop; it was part of the bride’s effort to create the traditional wedding she wanted while including the women closest to her.
There was one small backstage complication. One of the gown’s straps broke or came loose shortly before the vows. Nist continued with the ceremony, turning the incident into a light production mishap rather than allowing it to derail the day. The reported problem concerned the strap shortly before the ceremony and should not be read as evidence that the gown failed throughout the event.
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The rings and Neil Lane’s role
Turner wore a tuxedo, and he selected wedding bands with celebrity jeweler Neil Lane. Coverage of the ring-shopping segment confirms Lane’s involvement, but reliable reporting did not establish the exact band models, metals, stone specifications or retail prices.
That distinction matters because entertainment coverage sometimes turns a televised jewelry appearance into a precise product description. In this case, there is not enough verified information to identify the rings by model or assign them a value. The rings later became part of the couple’s divorce news: ABC reported that Turner and Nist had a prenuptial agreement and that both returned their rings.
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Guests from Bachelor Nation
Approximately 150 people attended the wedding, according to reporting from The Knot. The guest list included relatives and friends as well as more than 50 people associated with the Bachelor franchise.
Widely reported Bachelor Nation attendees included Trista and Ryan Sutter, Jason and Molly Mesnick, Desiree and Chris Siegfried, Ben Higgins, Wells Adams, Charity Lawson, Brayden Bowers, Christina Mandrell, Raven Gates, Adam Gottschalk, Jade Roper, Tanner Tolbert, Kenny Braasch, Mari Pepin, Ashley Iaconetti, Jared Haibon, Caelynn Miller-Keyes, Dean Unglert, Zach Shallcross, Kaity Biggar, Tayshia Adams, Kaitlyn Bristowe, Rachel Recchia, Joey Graziadei, Michelle Young and Jack Leius.
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Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minuteOther reported guests included former Golden Bachelor contestants Leslie Fhima, Kathy Swarts, Ellen Goltzer and Natascha Hardee. Guest lists varied among entertainment outlets, so these names should be understood as reported attendees rather than a list independently confirmed in full by ABC.
Fhima’s presence had particular significance. She was the runner-up on Turner’s season and had been visibly heartbroken when he chose Nist. ABC reported that Fhima attended to support the couple and said she was happy for them. Her attendance gave the televised wedding an unusually direct connection to the emotional history of the season.
What viewers did not see on the live broadcast
The wedding day continued beyond the portions shown on The Golden Wedding. The reception included dancing and a bouquet toss, with family, friends and Bachelor Nation guests participating. The Knot offered a first-person account indicating that the live special did not capture every part of the celebration or every guest experience.
That distinction is important when reconstructing the event. The broadcast showed the ceremony as a franchise milestone, but it was not a complete recording of every reception moment, conversation or family gathering. Some of the most intimate parts of the wedding existed outside the televised edit.
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Why the wedding mattered to the Golden Bachelor franchise
The Golden Wedding was promoted as a continuation of the hope-centered message associated with The Golden Bachelor. Turner and Nist were older leads beginning a relationship in public, and their wedding offered the franchise a different kind of romantic finale: one centered on companionship, adult children, grandchildren and the practical realities of joining established families.
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At the same time, the event was an ambitious television production. More than 150 guests, a large group of franchise personalities, a celebrity planner, multiple family speeches and a live broadcast made privacy impossible in the conventional sense. The couple’s stated goal was therefore not to remove the cameras, but to keep the cameras from becoming the emotional focus.
That tension explains the wedding’s tone. The event was polished enough for a live network special, but its most memorable details were personal: relatives walking in the processional, daughters speaking for the families, a former contestant officiating, and a bride carrying on after a loose strap.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What happened to Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist?
Current-status note: Turner and Nist are no longer married. On April 12, 2024, they announced on Good Morning America that they were divorcing.
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Later reporting described the marriage as lasting roughly three months. ABC reported that the couple had a prenuptial agreement and that both returned their rings. Because the available reporting does not establish a legal completion date for the divorce, it is more accurate to describe the relationship as having ended in divorce proceedings and to refer to Turner and Nist as a former couple rather than as newlyweds.
ABC later reported that Turner became engaged to Lana Sutton in October 2025, 15 months after his divorce from Nist. That development is separate from the January 2024 wedding, but it is relevant context for readers revisiting the story now.
The lasting record of the Golden Wedding
Turner and Nist’s marriage did not last, but the wedding remains a distinctive piece of Bachelor Nation history. It was the first televised wedding for the original Golden Bachelor couple, a live network event and a ceremony deliberately organized around children, grandchildren and the merging of two families.
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The most accurate way to remember it is not as an enduring fairy-tale marriage, but as a carefully produced and genuinely meaningful wedding day whose public story changed only a few months later.
Frequently Asked Questions
When and where did Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist get married?
Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist married on January 4, 2024, at La Quinta Resort & Club in La Quinta, California, near Palm Springs. ABC broadcast the ceremony live in the two-hour special The Golden Wedding.
Who officiated Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist’s wedding?
Susan Noles, a former contestant from Gerry Turner’s season of The Golden Bachelor, officiated the ceremony.
What did Theresa Nist wear for the Golden Bachelor wedding?
Theresa Nist wore a white, strapless Badgley Mischka mermaid-style gown with a pearl-decorated veil. One strap reportedly broke or came loose shortly before the vows, but she continued with the ceremony.
Are Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist still married?
No. Turner and Nist announced on Good Morning America on April 12, 2024, that they were divorcing after discussions about where to establish a shared home.
The Bottom Line
Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist married on January 4, 2024, at La Quinta Resort & Club during ABC’s live The Golden Wedding special. The ceremony emphasized their children and grandchildren, with Susan Noles officiating and Nist wearing Badgley Mischka. Turner and Nist announced their divorce on April 12, 2024, so the wedding should now be described as the former couple’s televised January 2024 ceremony.
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