Couple Who Remained Chaste Before Marriage to be Featured on Wedding Reality Series
Sunday, January 09, 2005
By CASANDRA ANDREWS
Mobile Press Register
Staff Reporter

Years before they met, Christin Kelly and Michael Bumstead decided to save sex for marriage.

It's a decision, the newlyweds say, that likely led producers to pick them for a reality series about weddings scheduled to air later this month on the Oxygen network.

"We are both virgins and not ashamed in the least bit," Kelly, 24, wrote as part of a questionnaire she submitted to take part in the show. "I think society needs to see more stories of abstinence and purity in a world where sex is sold on every channel of the television and every page of magazines.

"True love is worth waiting for."

The couple met in June of 2003 under the bright lights at Hank Aaron Stadium in Mobile. Bumstead, then a pitcher for the BayBears, smiled when he caught the gaze of Kelly, a brainy beauty queen who was there to sing the national anthem.

Seven months and a cross-country courtship later, they were back on the field last February, Bumstead down on one knee, asking Kelly to be his wife as her family and friends secretly videotaped from the otherwise empty stands.

She accepted as "Will you marry me, Christin?" flashed on the scoreboard.

They married in a Dec. 11 ceremony at First Baptist North Mobile. Film crews recorded everything during the three weeks leading up to the wedding.

The Knot and Oxygen Media typically air "Real Weddings from The Knot" once a month. Filmed in reality style, each episode follows one couple in the weeks preceding their nuptials. It's what the network calls "a sneak peek into the good, the bad and the endlessly entertaining stories involved with planning a wedding."

While the Oxygen channel isn't available to local Comcast cable subscribers, some satellite providers offer it. A different "real wedding" segment will air each night at 9 during the week of Jan. 17-21, though Kelly isn't sure yet which evening their show will be featured.

For DirecTV subscribers, Oxygen is on Channel 251. Those who subscribe to Charter Communications can view Oxygen on Channel 76.

Promotions for the weeklong series have already started, though Kelly hasn't seen any of the footage.

"I'm very nervous," she said. "It's a 30-minute show, and they filmed me for three weeks, and I have no idea what they are going to put on there."

The bride's mother, Cindy Kelly, described the experience of living under a microscope as "wild" but worth it: "If one little girl decides to save herself for marriage, then that's what it's all about."

Cindy Kelly said her other children, who are 18 and 21, told her in recent years, that they, too, have decided to put off having sex until they are married, saying they were inspired by their older sister.

While planning the wedding, which was accomplished on a $10,000 budget, Christin Kelly received an e-mail from theknot.com asking for entries for the monthly television feature. She wrote back, detailing how she met Bumstead and what she described as their fairy-tale romance.

After submitting photos, they were asked to send in a home video. Christin Kelly made up a song called "Pick us Please," and sang it to the tune of "Jingle Bells" on the video.

The young woman, who graduated in three years from the University of Mobile and competed in the Miss Alabama pageant three times, thought being selected was a longshot.

"They called me on a Friday and said 'We are going to be there on a Saturday,' so there was no preparation at all," she said.

For the first two weeks, only one producer/director, Amy Emmerich, was there to film the couple. A week before the wedding, another woman arrived to film Bumstead exclusively. Two days before the big day, two more crew members showed up so they could have four cameras focused on the couple.

The crew captured hundreds of hours of footage -- including mother-daughter talks that lasted until the wee hours -- that will be compressed into the half-hour time slot.

"You almost forget you are on camera, which is scary," Christin Kelly said. "There were times when I thought, 'Why did we get into this?'"

Kelly and Bumstead got no money and no prizes for taking part in the series. For them, the reward was spreading the message that young people should save sex for marriage.

Besides the television show in January, the couple's story, along with some photos, also will be featured on the Web site www.theknot.com.

She said people who worked for the network told them during filming that this was the first time they would feature a couple who didn't live together before they wed.

Christin Kelly said the film crews shot her moving into a new home and even followed her to a speaking engagement, where she talked to a group of middle school girls about abstinence three days before the wedding.

While teen pregnancy rates have dropped in recent years nationwide, premarital sex among high school students in Alabama continues to soar above the national average. According to a national youth risk behavior survey conducted in 2003, 58 percent of female high school students and 56 percent of their male counterparts in Alabama reported having sexual intercourse, compared to 45 percent of female high school students and 48 percent of male high school students nationwide.

The federal government is expected to spend nearly $170 million on abstinence-only education programs this year, more than twice the amount spent in 2001.

"Times are changing, and people are being faced with a lot more pressures earlier," Kelly said. "I think it's important that they know that everybody is not doing it, that it's OK and you don't have to be embarrassed. It's something to be proud of."

Kelly graduated summa cum laude from the University of Mobile with degrees in sociology, theater and business. She's pursuing a master's degree in business administration from UM, a Southern Baptist affiliated college.

She was Miss University of Mobile 2001 and Miss Mobile 2002, winning a Miss America Community Service Award for her volunteer work with senior citizens. She also was inducted into the Alabama Senior Citizens Hall of Fame.

Now she works in sales and marketing for Mobile's Gordon Oaks Retirement Village, where she's been employed for more than three years.

After returning from a honeymoon trip to Hawaii just before Christmas, Kelly said she was glad that she and Bumstead remained virgins before marriage.

"It was definitely worth it," she said. "What greater gift can you give one another beside yourself? It's so hard dating, but it's so worth it once you get to the end."

Bumstead, 27, from Big Bear Lake, Calif., went to Cerritos Junior College and California State Northridge University. He played center field in college and was drafted by the San Diego Padres organization. He's pitched for them the past four seasons, ending last season at the AAA level, playing for the Portland Beavers.

During the off-season, Bumstead substituted at a local high school, announced basketball games at the University of Mobile and worked for Kelly's father at a screen-printing business. He leaves for spring training in February.

"From there, he could be sent to any level in the Padres organization," Kelly said, "so it's all up in the air."

Kelly said she plans to continue working in Mobile while her new husband pursues his baseball career, wherever that may take him.

"I think our story is one of encouragement," she said. "You don't have to settle, and someone that loves you unconditionally wouldn't make you compromise your morals and values."

Reprinted with permission from the Mobile Register Copyright 2005.