The Bachelorette season 20 saw its titular star, Charity Lawson, whittling down the prospective men to find one made of true husband material, and picking her dream man in the form of Dotun Olubeko. Though the finale was full of tears as she bid farewell to Joey Graziadei, she turned to Olubeko with joy as she accepted his proposal of marriage.
The season came to an emotional end as Lawson had to make the hard decision between two men she claimed to love, telling her family they are “the greatest two guys I have met, ever.” In the end, though, she had to make a decision, and though Graziadei was certain he would end up with a fiancée at the end of the show, she ultimately picked Olubeko, just as we predicted.
Throughout the show, it was obvious he was besotted with her and shared her goals of building a future together. It became apparent that Charity felt the same way, and though she held a special place in her heart for Graziadei, it wasn’t as deep a love as she felt for Dotun.
It’s been a year since the season 20 finale, with the engaged couple living away from the cameras and the often-unreal world of filming a reality television series, so did they stick it out and make their way down the aisle?
Are Charity and Dotun still engaged?
The Bachelorette‘s season 20 finale was a three-hour-long doozy, with an After the Final Rose live segment catching up with many of the contestants and checking in to see if Lawson and Olubeko were still engaged. The two announced at the time that they were still together, which was confirmed again when they showed up together at The Golden Wedding the following year.
In a special moment after Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist tied the knot on The Golden Wedding ⏤ which aired on ABC Jan. 4, 2024 ⏤ Olubeko announced that he and Lawson planned to get married in the fall of 2025.
The show doesn’t particularly have the highest success rate of couples staying together, though, with only four out of the 19 seasons prior still remaining together to this day, as of October 2024. Even Gerry Turner, the first Golden Bachelor, announced his split from Nist three months after their televised wedding.
While Charity and Dotun have teased their wedding plans on their Instagram accounts, posts featuring the couple as of late have been few and far between. Alarm bells rang for fans of the couple on September 7th, 2024, when Charity told US Weekly that the two had put their wedding plans on a “pause.”
“We’ve taken a pause on it and I’m totally fine announcing that. I feel like people ask all the time, ‘How’s wedding planning? Or where are we at?’” Charity, 28, told the publication. The phrasing and word choice of “pause” — along with the headlines that followed — seemed to suggest the wedding was off entirely. However, Lawson clarified what she meant by a “pause,” explaining that the pressure to organize the wedding within a swift timeframe was not worth the stress it caused the couple.
“For me, I got in this space where I just felt this constant pressure of, like, I need to check off something every month or every week. And it got to the point where I’m like, ‘I don’t wanna do that right now,’” Charity elaborated. “I’m also still just easing into life and normalcy again. Obviously, we’re still getting married. We’re taking a moment, taking a beat.”