RETURNING: 19 Kids & Counting: Planning Jill's Wedding

It should come as no surprise that the bulk of this season will be about the preparations for Jill's wedding, but I hadn't anticipated how anything else will be shown out-of-order to balance out the planning segments. The wealth of the Duggars is something that is often ignored at this point in the series (though it was a large point in the early seasons and the pre-series television specials), so it's interesting to be reminded that they own multiple properties that are going unused. Plus, there's the ever-present attempt to show Michelle paying attention to all of her offspring's needs, like taking just Jennifer to the eye doctor. Similarly, JimBob doing the soapbox derby cars with only about half of the kids is probably mostly an attempt to relax the family from the stresses of wedding planning while taking the time to do something together that most families don't do.

19 Kids and Counting "Duggars & Mothers" (S08E13): Jill, Michelle, the older girls, and Derick go to Venessa's house. [apparently she's Jill's boss and will be helping coordinate the wedding.] They're planning for 1,000-1,500 invitations, when the average is 140. [we ordered 170 for 330 potential guests, but only had 175 attend.] They want to plan it all in three months, so the workload will be intense. [apparently the average is a year. my engagement was 26 months.]

JimBob plans to give the house they cleaned up a while back to Jill until the family decides to sell it, but it needs some more work before it can be lived in. [haha that Jana talked about Jill delivering children in the bathtub! I could have lived without seeing James's giant splinter!]

TLC

Derick's mom has been diagnosed with lymphoma, so she can't attend the Mother's Day lunch Michelle plans for Derick and Ben's families. Derick's brother and his girlfriend come over, though, as does the whole Seewald clan, and they enjoy lasagna, salad, (overdone) rolls, and strawberry shortcake. During the meal, JimBob invites Ben to live in the guesthouse. [awkward that he did it to speed up the marriage timeline!] The room they're planning for him doesn't have carpet or windows, so there's a lot of preparation to do. [what's with the red rectangles painted on the walls? also, I bet the Duggar siblings were excited to hear about Ben's new proximity, since they apparently charge $5/hour to chaperone!]

19 Kids and Counting "Duggar Daughter Dates" (S08E14): Jill and Derick go hiking on her birthday (May 17th) with James while Jessa and Ben go to the shooting range with Jason.

Six-year-old Jennifer strains to see during schoolwork and gets headaches, so she gets glasses with purple frames. Michelle, JimBob, and Jill also wear glasses. [I thought one of the middle boys did as well?]

19 Kids and Counting "Duggar-Sized Wedding Planning" (S08E15): Jill and Derick taste some cakes baked by a former midwife client, Amanda. There's Traditional Pound cake with a strawberry filling, French Vanilla with a vanilla custard filling, Golden Butter, and Classic White. They decide on French Vanilla with strawberry filling, iced in an off-white shade. [apparently Jessa wants ice cream at her wedding.] They'll do four tiers (16"-14"-12"-6"), plus sheet cakes. The couple also checks out wedding venues, and settle on the same church where JimBob and Michelle were married.

Some of the kids want to build Soapbox Derby cars, but the wheels weren't included in the kits, and they struggle to build them correctly.

Over in Washington, DC, Anna has Mackynzie and Michael work on making paver stones for the yard. [how messy!]