One week after Bachelor Nation watched The Bachelor‘s Grant Ellis meet three of his Top 4 contestant’s families, Dina Lupancu is setting the record straight about her unconventional Hometown Date.
As noted in our Season 29, Episode 6 recap, for Grant’s final Hometown Date, he headed to Chicago and learned that because Dina’s family is traditional and her dad is an ordained deacon, they didn’t approve of him dating multiple women. Both Grant and Dina seemed disappointed that her family opted out of their Hometown Date, but Grant had a great time meeting Dina’s friends and the date seemed like a success.
In the end, Grant said goodbye to Dina during the Hometown Week rose ceremony. And during the “Women Tell All” special on March 10, Dina came clean about what really went down with her family during Hometown Week.
“This is something that I haven’t told anyone, and I didn’t tell Grant at the time. But it was ultimately my decision to not have my family be a part of it,” Dina explained during The Women Tell All event. “I have a really big family. Half of them were okay with it, and the other half — mostly my brothers — were not okay.”
Dina explained that half of her family felt the journey was too fast and she wouldn’t “be able to have a guy who’s been dating 25 girls be faithful to her.” She assured viewers that her family ultimately “didn’t trust the process,” so when she found out that they “were at odds with each other about it, and it was causing polarizing views” she decided to just have Grant meet her friends instead.
“I’m not going to have my family meet Grant, and the whole time I’m having to convince them of the process, and convince them that I’m ready to get engaged when I don’t know that I necessarily was convinced about myself,” Dina explained, letting host Jesse Palmer know that in hindsight, she did regret the decision “a little bit.”
Before the night ended, Grant reunited with his “stunning” 15 exes and addressed Dina for the first time since that Hometown Week rose ceremony. After she teared up and questioned if her family missing their date was a dealbreaker for him, Grant said, “Listen, you’re amazing, and you’re wonderful, and your family not being there was not the reason. It wasn’t the reason. It’s just things that I was looking for, just what was best for me.”
“If we were to end up at the end, there’s time to meet the family,” Grant continued. “I was more concerned about how you felt, because that’s something that hurts — your family not being there…I know they support you. They just don’t know this process, it’s new to them. So I wasn’t really thinking about how I was feeling. I was thinking about how you were feeling in that moment.”
Though Grant and Dina didn’t end up together, the Season 29 contestant is incredibly grateful for her Bachelor journey, because Grant helped her thaw her “ice queen” persona.
“I’m not going to be mushy gushy all the time, but I’m also not this stone-cold person, either, so to be able to do that with Grant in such a short amount of time was special for me,” Dina said. “I think it taught me that I’m able to put my walls down for the right person. I’m able to allow myself to feel things that I don’t necessarily let myself feel all the time.”
New episodes of The Bachelor Season 29 premiere Mondays on ABC with next-day streaming on Hulu.
The post ‘The Bachelor’s Dina Lupancu Reveals Why Her Family Skipped Grant’s Hometown Date: “It Was Ultimately My Decision” appeared first on Decider.
