‘Bachelorette’ Rachel Lindsay on Why She Refuses to Televise Wedding to Bryan Abasolo

Rachel Lindsay and Bryan Abasolo may have gotten engaged on national television, but when it comes to tying the knot this month, The Bachelorette couple is keeping things off-camera. In a new interview with PEOPLE, the bride-to-be opened up about their decision to draw the line between public and private on their relationship.

“I think our season was really the first time where you realize a wedding isn’t always guaranteed,” Lindsay told the outlet of her relationship with Abasolo, which sparked two years ago on her season of the ABC dating show. “I even thought, the next step was you get engaged and you’re offered this TV wedding.”

“So when you come off the show and you’re in that TV mode—I wanted a TV wedding. I 100 percent did,” she admitted. “Then, as we got to know each other in the real world and things became normalized, and then I started hearing horror stories about these TV weddings, I am very thankful that we don’t have one and that we’re doing it on our own.”

With Bachelor Nation break ups a dime a dozen, Lindsay also hoped that making their vows to one another in private will reassure people how serious their relationship is.

“I also think that it shows to the world or Bachelor Nation that what we have is more real,” she said of their private destination wedding scheduled for this month. “We don’t need TV. We don’t need to get paid. We don’t buy a network, we’re doing this because this is what we want to do. I think it has more meaning.”

Last year, Lindsay revealed in an interview with Entertainment Tonight that she and her husband-to-be plan on starting a family sooner rather than later.

“I really want to start next year. I want more stability,” she explained. “We’ve been traveling so much and I want to create this family unit and a home for us. We’ve been having a great time, traveling, we live together, so we’ve already done the things, ‘Oh, I’ll wait two years once I get married’—we’re already doing that. So, it’s like, why wait?! Let’s have kids!”

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