Mariana De Andrade and Chris Singleton will wed live on Lifetime this evening on My Great Big Live Wedding. The couple are high school sweethearts and are tying the knot at a venue near their hometown of Charleston, S.C. Tuesday night, which is about all they know about their wedding.
Most of the ceremony details have been left up to David Tutera, who has planned this wedding and seven others for his new TV show, My Great Big Live Wedding, so the couple knows very little about what to expect for their big night.
According to the Tribune, approximately 100 people are expected to attend the wedding. Singelton’s 15-year-old brother Caleb is his best man, and his 18-year old sister Camryn is a bridesmaid. Unfortunately, Singleton’s parents won’t be in attendance, as both passed away in recent years. His father passed away from health complications in 2017, and his mother was one of nine parishioners shot and killed when white supremacist Dylann Roof opened fire at a Charleston church in 2015. According to the Tribune, Singleton said he hopes his parents are honored at his wedding ceremony.
“Me and David talked about that, and I thought, I’d love to get something in the wedding that’s … something happy, I guess, not something super sad or anything like that,” Singleton told the Tribune.
The couple met as students at Goose Creek High School near Charleston, and were engaged before their son was born in October, 2017. De Andrade is an accounting student at the College of Charleston, and Singleton played in the outfield for the Cubs’ Class A minor league team in South Bend last year. The production behind My Great Big Live Wedding – Thinkfactory Media – reached out to Singleton and De Andrade last summer to ask if they were interested in applying to be on the show, which would include an all-expenses paid wedding.
“Of course I thought it was a joke at first. I thought it was somebody that calls you or leaves you a message saying you won a free cruise to somewhere,” Singleton said. “And then there was a couple more messages. I said you know what? Maybe this thing’s real. And then I ended up talking to a guy whose name is Justin on the phone, back and forth. He put me through the process of trying to win the wedding and did a couple Skype interviews, one with my family as well, and then, yeah, we were lucky enough to win it.”
Singleton and De Andrade, as well as seven other couples, were chosen for the show due to their “remarkable stories of love and survival redefine real love,” according to Lifetime. Firefighters, wounded veterans and a man who was shot in the 2017 Route 91 Harvest music festival massacre in Las Vegas are among those featured on My Great Big Live Wedding, according to the Tribune.
The Singleton-De-Andrade nuptials are set to be broadcast live at 9 p.m. Tuesday on the Lifetime network. The eight-part series premiered Feb. 5. Tune in tonight for My Great Big Live Wedding to watch the happy couple tie the knot.