Hold on! It’s not what you think… Michelle Duggar did NOT give birth to baby No. 18 yet (she is due in January). Rather, the famously fertile family from Arkansas is a bit bigger today thanks to 20-year-old Josh Duggar getting hitched over the weekend.
It’s the first wedding in the Duggar family since mom Michelle and dad Jim Bob wed more than two decades ago. According to a Florida newspaper, Josh, the oldest of the Duggar’s 17 children, married 20-year-old Anna Keller in an intimate ceremony Friday night. The young couple reportedly met at a home-schoolers’ conference in 2006 and kept their long distance relationship alive (Keller lived in Florida and Duggar in Arkansas) via frequent phone calls.
But, don’t call what Duggar and Keller did for two years “dating.” Josh apparently can’t stand the term and prefers the word “courting.”
“Dating means you’re shopping around,” Duggar told the paper. “A courtship is the path toward marriage.”
In addition, Duggar reveals that for he and Keller “courting” helped with their commitment to save sexual relations for after the wedding. In the few face-to-face meetings the couple had before they exchanged vows, Duggar says a chaperone was with them the entire time for the sake of accountability. Duggar added that he is proud of the way he and his new wife remained steadfast to their pre-marital abstinence promise.
In this day and age I’m sure most people will be shocked when they learn that the couple’s first kiss was shared at the altar only after they said, “I do.”
As for the future for the newlyweds, they say they plan to follow in their parents’ procreating footsteps. (Josh and Anna were raised Baptist and eschew birth control, reasoning that every child is a gift from God.)
“Not everyone is blessed with being able to have children,” Keller said. “If the Lord chooses to bless us with a child, it wouldn’t matter if it was one, two or a bunch.”
In the meantime, Keller, who grew up in Florida with seven other siblings, is in the process of moving to Arkansas in order to be a part of the Duggars’ reality show on TLC called 17 Kids and Counting. Which begs the question: Will Josh and Anna be living in the Duggar’s 7,000-square-foot Fayetteville home along with the rest of the clan?
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