Wedding Day: Jaenelle and Nyk
Wedding Day this week featured a couple from Detroit, Jaenelle Burnette and Nyk Jones. The beginning of the show shared a story that the couple had a child who had serious health concerns at birth. This was one of the reasons why they earned the right to have the wedding of their dreams given to them by TNT and wedding planners Alan Dunn and Diann Valentine. I understand that the child was seriously ill – however, it seemed almost an afterthought or a quick footnote in the show tonight. I thought for sure that they would have focused more on the health concerns of the child – especially since Jaenelle is a nurse in the NICU at Children’s Hospital of Michigan.
We got the background on the couple. They met 15 years ago, but only started dating four years ago. They had planned to get married but it was postponed several times. Once due to work concerns. Once because Jaenelle became pregnant. Once because of the health concerns of the child. Now this confused me. Later on in the show Nyk tells Alan that he proposed to Jaenelle at their daughter’s first birthday party. So what information is correct – did they have a wedding planned three times that was cancelled, or was it one of those “oh, yes, we are going to get married” but life happened and put a dent in their plans? That’s not much of a tear jerker for sure.
Alan and Diann meet the friends and family of Jaenelle and Nick at the boat club where the wedding was scheduled to happen in just four days. The family was surprised to find out that Nyk and Janelle would be getting the wedding of their dreams. I was confused yet again, because I thought the couple had to be nominated to appear on the show and wouldn’t one of the family members at least have known about this? At the very end of the show we see home video of the couple and their child that has “submission” printed across the bottom. I guess they nominated themselves. Ok then.
Instead of the modest wedding planned there, the TNT team plan a beautiful fairy tale like ceremony at the beautiful Belle Isle Conservatory on the water, just across from Canada. The friends and family prepare the ceremony and reception sites while Jaenelle goes to Chicago for a shopping spree with her best friend, and Nyk gets whisked away to Chicago to have a do-over of his original proposal. As I mentioned before this confuses me – what is the real story? Because it’s a whole lot more heart wrenching to have a couple who has had to put their own happiness on hold three times rather than a couple who had a tough road personally to get where they are but only had the wedding date set once and there were no roadblocks to that wedding with the exception of the financial condition of the couple.
The wedding itself was nice. I thought the reception site in the first show of the series (Holli and Steve) was way more beautiful than the one this week. I also found myself being kind of bored with this couple and their story. Last week I did shed a tear once or twice (though I might not want to admit it) when I heard the story of how Holli nearly died just four days before her wedding day. That’s the kind of stories I thought would be featured in this series. That couple had been to hell and back. While Nyk and Jaenelle seem like really nice people, the kind of people I’d want as friends and would enjoy spending time with, I just feel there is no comparison between their story and the one of Holli and Steve. That’s the kind of couple I thought we would see on the show, the type of families you see on a show like Extreme Makeover Home Edition or something like that.
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