The Bachelor alum Colton Underwood has announced he is engaged to boyfriend Jordan C. Brown.
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After dating for less than one year, Colton, 30, and the political strategist, 39, have agreed to marry.
Colton took to Instagram on Monday and teased the big announcement by posting a photo with Jordan and writing, "Life is going to be fun with you."
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Jordan also posted a picture of Colton popping a champagne bottle and wrote, "The only time in my life I'm ok with wasting a bottle of champagne. I love you babe."
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Colton, who starred on The Bachelor's 23rd season and publicly declared he's gay on Good Morning America in April 2021, told People in a Monday statement how he's "extremely happy!"
Colton added, "2021 was the most transformative year of my life. Starting 2022 off with my best friend, teammate and now fiance is something I never thought was going to be possible."
Colton revealed that his engagement took place in Big Sur, CA, following his big and "unforgettable" 30th birthday celebration in late January with his loved ones.
"After my birthday, Jordan and I went to Big Sur for a weekend getaway to decompress and relax in nature," Colton shared. "I couldn't have pictured a more beautiful place to celebrate an amazing milestone in my life and relationship."
Colton and Jordan went Instagram official in early December.
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One day after Colton's docu-reality series Coming Out Colton premiered December 3 on Netflix, Colton posted photos of the pair on his Instagram Story and wrote to Jordan, "Happy birthday to my dog-loving, family man, corn-fed love."
"I wasn't really pursuing dating at first. But since then I found somebody and I am very much in love," Colton told the magazine in December.
Colton called Jordan a "great support" at the time and added, "I'm the luckiest person to have him in my life." They had already met each other's family at that point.
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Within a month of making their relationship public, Colton and Jordan purchased a $3 million home together in Sherman Oaks, CA.
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"I was struggling with my sexuality but I had such a level of fear over being gay," Colton previously told People.
"Now that I've been out to myself for a year, it's the healthiest and happiest I've ever felt. And there is nothing I would ever want to be but gay."
Colton, however, decided against featuring Jordan in his Netflix docu-reality series.
"I have been through that. I have done that. Even going into the show, that was one of the conversations with the production company," Colton explained to Us Weekly late last year.
"I'm not in a space right now to really, like, put myself out there like that," he said. "I had a lot of self-discovery to do."
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Colton assured Us that he was "not hiding" his relationship but just wanted some privacy for the start of his first gay relationship.
But that doesn't mean Colton isn't open to starring on more reality TV with his beau in the future.
"I don't want to speak in definitives right now because as I learned, I'm growing and I want to give myself space to really explore new things at the moment," Colton recently said.
"I've definitely drawn boundaries on that. Having a public relationship, for me, was not healthy. I just think right now I'm really sort of protecting and guarding what I have."
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Before officially posting photos with one another, Colton made his attraction to Jordan known by commenting on a picture of Jordan wearing a suit to the Baby 2 Baby gala in November 2021.
Colton commented with a fire and a heart emoji.
Colton and Jordan were first linked in September 2021, when they were photographed kissing and flirting during a romantic getaway to a Four Seasons resort in Maui, HI.
According to an eyewitness, the Season 23 The Bachelor star was "making out and snuggling" with Jordan by the hotel pool, Us reported at the time.
"They were tanning and swimming. They were very out in the open and not hiding their PDA!" the eyewitness added.
Colton publicly declared he's gay following his devastating breakup from The Bachelor 23 winner Cassie Randolph in May 2020 after 18 months of dating.
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The former pro football player shared on GMA in April 2021 how he had never experienced an "emotional connection" with a person of the same sex before.
"I'm looking for someone who can push me and challenge me in all the right ways. I still have a long ways to go. I'm still learning," Colton said at the time.
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In May, Colton reportedly conducted a Q&A with his followers on Instagram and ranted about an intrusive question asking how many men he had hooked up with.
Colton wrote on Instagram Stories after sharing the question, "Let me vent for a second. Questions like this are inappropriate."
"I understand you might know me from The Bachelor where I shared a lot about my personal life. I have set boundaries and I'm respecting myself in a way that will lead me to a healthier life."
Colton starred on The Bachelor in 2019 after failing to win Becca Kufrin's heart on The Bachelorette's fourteenth edition. He also dated Tia Booth before and during his stint on Bachelor in Paradise's fifth season, which showed Colton breaking up with the Arkansas native.
After coming out as gay in April, Colton dished about what his life was like behind closed doors prior to appearing on The Bachelorette in 2018.
"I'll say this: I was 'The Virgin Bachelor,' but I did experiment with men prior to being on The Bachelorette," Colton told Variety, before disclosing he had a few sexual encounters with men when he was in his twenties but never had sex with a man or woman prior to his time on The Bachelor franchise.
"When I say 'hookups,' not sex," confirmed Colton, who had met these men under a false name in 2016 or 2017 through a dating app called Grindr.
"I want to make that very clear that I did not have sex with a man, prior to that."
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Colton's prior "Virgin Bachelor" label resulted in fans anticipating his Fantasy-Suite decisions on The Bachelor and wondering if he was going to have sex with Cassie.
"I never asked to be labeled as the virgin bachelor and have people feel the security to ask me questions about my sex life," Colton reportedly explained in the spring.
"It just happened and during that time I thought I had no other choice but to just go with it or the network would be mad. I know differently now. I'll share what I want and this won't be one of those things."
Colton previously told Variety that he constantly worried about being "outed" by one of the men he had hooked up with. Colton feared being exposed and seeing his long-kept secret sold to the tabloids.
"I remember feeling so guilty, like 'What the hell am I doing?'" Colton recalled of his gay encounters.
"It was my first time letting myself even go there, so much so that I was like, 'I need The Bachelorette in my life, so I could be straight.'"
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Colton called himself "a miserable person living as a shell of a human being" while pretending to be straight for well over a decade.
Cassie, for example, had no idea Colton was gay during their entire year-and-a-half long relationship and only learned his sexual orientation when The Bachelor star came out publicly in April, according to People.
Colton has said in the press he really loved Cassie, which confused him even more about possibly coming out as gay, and went through a very dark time following his breakup with Cassie and even attempted suicide one evening.
Colton, who felt "different" at age six and realized he was gay in high school, shared with GMA co-host Robin Roberts, however, that after hating himself for a long time, he finally accepted his sexuality in early 2021 and has never been happier or healthier.
Cassie has since moved on and is happily dating boyfriend Brighton Reinhardt.
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