The 'Sister Wives' Commitment Ceremony Dresses Caused a Fair Amount of Drama

Those who have tuned into Sister Wives since it began airing in 2010 have watched the relationships between Kody Brown and his four wives — Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn — evolve significantly. Through children, cross-country moves, scandals, a global pandemic, and more, the polygamists have managed to remain (somewhat of) a family unit. But let's take a walk down memory lane for a moment and hone in on the Sister Wives commitment ceremony dresses. Because they caused some serious drama.

In Season 6, Episode 19, the Brown family prepared for and held a commitment ceremony during which Kody and his four wives re-committed themselves to their life of polygamy.

"For the past six months, we've been planning a family celebration — basically, a commitment celebration — where we're inaugurating our family mission statement," Kody explained. "We've been writing the statement, we've got this party planned, and now it's all coming together."

"In our faith, when we actually make our covenant, or what some people call our vows, we do that for eternity. It's not something we're going to renew. We are simply celebrating our family's commitment to grow together," Kody went on to say. "The celebration is actually marking the five of us and our children agreeing that we are one family. Sure, we have four marriages. But this is one family. And our homes together are one home."

Drama, of course, plagued the preparations for the celebration. Among the issues were the logistics surrounding the four dresses Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn would be wearing.

Sam, the daughter of one of Christine's friends, just graduated from design school and agreed to create the dresses for the Brown family's commitment ceremony.

"We went to her three weeks ago and said, 'Hey, can you make us four dresses from scratch?' Because, I don't know, we thought that was OK," Janelle explained. "But it's proven to be almost impossible, I feel like."

In the process of making Meri's dress, it was decided that there wasn't enough time to work out the details — so she ended up purchasing a beautiful green dress, which she paired with a white shrug jacket.

Sam continued designing the dresses for Christine, Janelle, and Robyn up until the day of the commitment ceremony. That is, until it was determined last-minute that Robyn's dress just wasn't going to work either.

"May I be blunt?" Sam said to Robyn 30 minutes before pictures. "Do you have another dress? This is not working at all, and I would rather you walk out there with something I know is going to make you look gorgeous than just to take this simply because I've worked on it."

Robyn ended up going with a dark blue dress with sleeves that she already owned.

Janelle's custom-made dress was finished two hours late for photos, but it did get done. And she looked absolutely stunning in the blue form-fitting gown.

Christine's dress seemed to be the most straightforward design for Sam to pull off. It was a burnt orange color with a yellow sash around her waist.

In the end, everyone looked amazing and everything for the commitment ceremony was pulled together. The celebration itself ran very smoothly, too, despite the drama leading up to the big event.

Take a look at all four of the Sister Wives stars' dresses that were worn at their commitment ceremony.

You can stream all 15 seasons of Sister Wives on Discovery Plus.