‘Dog the Bounty Hunter’: Beth Chapman’s Daughter Cecily Waiting for Coronavirus Pandemic to ‘Calm Down’ Before Marrying Fiance

Cecily Chapman, the daughter of late Dog the Bounty Hunter star Beth Chapman, is waiting a bit before tying the knot. Chapman, 27, will marry her fiancé, Matty Smith, sometime towards the end of next year. The couple aims for a Halloween or Christmas wedding in Hawaii, but they’re waiting until the coronavirus pandemic subsides.

“We’re waiting for the whole COVID thing to calm down but if it comes to it we’ll just have a private wedding,” Chapman told The Sun. “We want to get married within a year. I would like a Christmas wedding or a Halloween wedding. I like the weather in Hawaii in November time. I think the wedding will be here in Hawaii, nothing beats a beach wedding.

She added, “Hopefully it will be a lot of fun for everyone to get together after we’ve all been locked down for so long. But the one thing I’m definitely not going to do is wear a mask on my wedding day – even if I have to make everyone sit really far away. I am not walking down the aisle in a mask – there’s no way.”

The wedding itself will come almost 3 years after Chapman and Smith’s engagement, which began at Christmas in 2018. Regardless of when the wedding goes down, she wanted Beth, who died from cancer in June 2019 at age 51, to be with her in some way. She decided to wear the same dress Beth wore when marrying Duane “Dog” Chapman, Chapman’s stepfather.

“I always wanted to wear my mom’s dress for my wedding,” she said. “The day she got married to my dad I thought she looked so beautiful – it was the most beautiful dress I could ever imagine. A top designer made it – it’s a stunning dress. It’s a halter neck and very flattering.”

She added, “It’s very traditional to wear your mother’s dress. But most of all, it’s a way for me to feel like she is with me the whole time and be a part of the wedding.”

She also said that she let Beth know that she wanted to wear the dress one day and that Dog, 67, is “supportive” of the decision. “It’s a big deal for me. I spoke to her while she was alive and told her I wanted the dress – I think I said that to her a couple of years after the wedding,” Chapman said. “As for my dad, I’m sure it will be super emotional for him seeing me wear the dress, but he understands what it means to me. He’s been very supportive of us girls having our mother’s things or choosing what to do with them. It will definitely be a special and an emotional day for him, but it’s very important to me that he walks me down the aisle.”

Cecily did note that, while she and Beth are similar in many ways, she will have to alter the dress a tad, noting her “boobs aren’t as big as Beth’s were.” After the wedding, she will pass the dress on to her half-sister Bonnie, 21.