Abigail Heringer found her forever on the beaches of Paradise. Now, she can’t wait to see some of her friends, like former Bachelorette Rachel Recchia and Blake Moynes, hopefully do the same when Bachelor in Paradise season 9 premieres next week.
“I’m so excited for him,” 28-year-old Heringer, who got engaged to Noah Erb in August, told Moynes, 33, while promoting RumHaven’s Paradise Party Pack. “He is such a great person. He deserves love. I know the normal route hasn’t worked out for him, but it didn’t work out for me, it didn’t work out for Noah and it worked on the beaches. So I’m curious to see how the beaches play out for him.”
Though Heringer and Erb, 28, didn’t exactly have a smooth run on season 7 — they broke up on the show and rekindled after filming wrapped — she believes “everything happened how it was supposed to happen.”
“We would be here without everything that went down in Paradise,” Heringer said. “It’s such a fun time to look back on, and to have the benefit it being on TV, we can always go back and replay those memories, which a lot of people don’t get the opportunity to do. It’s definitely a place of very fond memories — some not.”
When season 9 kicks off on Thursday, Herigner and Erb plan to tune in and sip on the Coconut Crush cocktail that can be made using RumHaven’s Paradise Party Pack.
“Noah and I still love to watch Paradise,” Heringer said.
The newly engaged couple recently moved into a new house in Erb’s hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and “nothing is set up,” Heringer said. “The only place that is set up is our outdoor patio with some string lights, so that’s where we’ve been enjoying our cocktails. It does feel like we’re in paradise out there! And then once you come inside to the war zone, it’s like the complete opposite.”
Heringer said she and Erb plan to throw an engagement party for family in their backyard later this month, and she hopes to make the house into a “cozy kind of farmhouse cottage” for their future kids. The couple has put off wedding planning as they continue focusing on home renovations.
“I don’t think trying to do a home renovation while trying to plan a wedding is a smart move,” Heringer said. “There’s a lot of decisions to be making. Nothing moves quickly. It’s not something I recommend.”
Heringer does, however, think the pair will tie the knot in Oklahoma — and be sipping on rum on the big day.
“We’ll definitely be having RumHaven,” she said. “It’d be our little tribute to Paradise.”
Heringer and Erb took notes when they attended fellow Paradise alums Joe Amabile and Serena Pitt’s nuptials in Charleston, South Carolina, earlier this month, but it also made her stress about “the looming cloud of planning,” Heringer said. “You’re just like, ‘Ugh, how do I just get started?’”
Heringer, who was born deaf, has also thought a bit about ways that she will modify her special day to account for her hearing loss.
“Something I’ve always struggled with are the speeches — a combination of, I’m usually sitting really far away from where the people are making speeches, and then the audio system, it’s very echoy, which makes it really hard to follow on,” Heringer said. “I was asking people for some suggestions and they said that they should print out the speeches and hand it to me so that I can follow along. It’d be weird if, I don’t know, Noah’s dad’s giving a really nice speech and everyone’s crying or laughing and I’m just over there like, ‘I have no idea what he’s saying.’”
The vet also contemplated whether she’ll wear her processor at the wedding.
“I was kind of teasing, should I wear my hair up and kind of show it off?” Heringer wondered. “I definitely want to try in some ways, maybe hair down during the ceremony and then wear it up for the reception just so that we can get some pictures with it. I mean, I really have not gone that far yet.”
For now, “I feel like I’m in a really good phase of the engagement,” Heringer said. “I’m still kind of running that high of, ‘Wow, we really took that big commitment step.’ But we’re not dealing with the pressures of wedding planning, all that stressful stuff. I think we’re going to try to wait a few months. The best part, it’s definitely just been able to enjoy it and not have to plan anything right now.”
Bachelor in Paradise season 9 premieres Thursday at 9 p.m. ET.
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