It’s no secret that the Duggar daughters get married at a relatively young age. At 24, Jessa Duggar Seewald has been married for nearly three years and already has two kids, while her older sister Jill, is also married and had her first baby in her early 20s—with another one on the way. But Joy-Anna Duggar’s recent wedding to Austin Forsyth came when she was still a teenager.
Now, in a new scene posted by The Stir from the family’s TLC reality show “Counting On,” the older Duggar sisters reveal that they had some reservations about Joy-Anna tying the knot at the young age of 19.
Which Duggar raised her eyebrows at Joy’s engagement?
In the clip, Austin approached Duggar patriarch Jim-Bob to ask for his teen daughter's hand in marriage. In an on-camera interview, Jessa is seen saying that at age 19, Joy-Anna was the youngest one of the Duggar sisters to be in a courtship “and now on the edge of an engagement." Jessa admitted that age 19 is “sort of young,” but she added that Joy-Anna is “very mature for her age” and that she had known her 23-year-old future fiancée for a long time before they became engaged.
Like mother, like daughter
Of course, Joy-Anna is actually older than her mother, Michelle, was when she married family patriarch Jim-Bob Duggar. The Duggar parents married in 1984, shortly after Michelle’s high school graduation. Michelle was only 17 years old at the time of her wedding, while her husband was 19. The couple would go on to have 19 children together, with Michelle giving birth to her first child, Josh, at age 22, and her last baby, Josie, at age 43.
In a recent Mother’s Day video posted for Michelle, Joy-Anna Duggar said she can’t wait to be a mom herself. If she gets pregnant quickly, Joy-Anna would be the youngest Duggar daughter to have a baby. It would be no surprise if Joy-Anna is the next Duggar sibling to announce a pregnancy.
Joy-Anna Duggar married Austin Forsyth in May, months earlier than fans expected, and the ceremony turned out to be the setting for yet another Duggar engagement. But this time it wasn’t a teen girl getting engaged, but instead 22-year-old Duggar brother, Joseph.
Joseph Duggar told People magazine that two hours into the reception at Joy and Austin’s wedding, he popped the question to the woman he had been courting, Kendra Caldwell. Joseph revealed that he had Joy-Anna’s approval to do the deed in the middle of her big day. The latest Duggar wedding date has not been set yet, but Joseph and Kendra are considering a fall ceremony.