Bachelorette Jillian Harris Excited To Start Her Life With Ed Swiderski In Chicago

In a little more than a month, Bachelorette Jillian Harris will be moving to Chicago to be with the love of her life, Ed Swiderski.

Swiderski was the last man standing on this season of The Bachelorette, and though the finale was riddled with tears and drama – with Harris having to reject both Kiptyn Locke and the returning Reid Rosenthal before accepting Swiderski’s proposal of marriage – the engaged couple sounded on top of the world as they spoke to CityNews.ca by phone from New York on Wednesday.

Now that the show is over and they’re able to be ‘out’ as a couple, they revealed their short term plans involve Harris moving to Chicago in September to live with Swiderski. Harris, an interior designer who just started her own company, Jillian Harris Design, hopes to find a job in the city. As for the future, they haven’t set a wedding date yet but they’re looking at the possibility of a ceremony in Western Canada within the next year to year and a half. They insist they’re not rushing things by living together right away.

“For us, it was like, why not? A lot of reasons why (other reality TV couples) haven’t worked is because I think a lot of people have done the long-distance thing and they kind of take it slow,” Harris explains. “We really are madly in love, we love being together, our relationship is easiest when we’re together. I would love to get back to my regular life, get back to work, and I can’t really do that in Vancouver, knowing that eventually I’ll be out in Chicago. So, it’s a simple answer, we’re just so excited to be together.”

In both the season finale and the After The Final Rose special, which aired Tuesday night, Harris and Swiderski looked every bit the happy couple, and Harris assures that’s indeed the case.

“It’s funny, because the more time we spend together the more we realize how alike we are. We have the same sort of sleeping patterns, we love the same food, we love our coffee the same way. Aside from him not liking country music we have the same taste in music. We both love just hanging out with friends or having beer and hotdogs. We have the same silly sense of humour,” she enthuses. “I think, for me, I was still worried that after all of this, I would wake up after the proposal and go, okay, when is he going to start saying things that worry me? But I feel that every day we spend together, and everything that comes out of his mouth, it makes me fall in love with him more and more.”

As for whether they’ll stay in Chicago or move closer to Jillian’s hometown of Vancouver is up in the air at this point, but Swiderski admits he loved what he saw of Canada over the course of the show.

“I fell in love with Canada, especially Vancouver. It was beautiful,” he says. “I’ve always been really impressed with Chicago and the skyline, but I could not believe how clean and beautiful Vancouver was.”

Harris’s decisions over the course of the season, notably giving Jake the boot, and keeping Wes and Tanner P. around longer than some would’ve liked, have come under much scrutiny. She says one of the hardest things to come to grips with was the realization that she was going to be criticized.

“The whole concept of the show is for me to find somebody and for me to be happy, but along the way, the viewers get really wrapped up in it and they get very personal opinions. But the show has been very successful for me because I’m on top of the world. I’m madly in love, we’ve been together for several months and it just keeps on getting better and better, but there are some people out there who think one of the other guys might have been better for me. Everybody is entitled to their opinions, providing that they’re not being too negative or immature about it,” she notes.

“I follow too much of the media and the blogs and stuff. Ed gives me a hard time, he’s like, ‘Babe, get off that stuff, it’s not good for you.’ Since the finale, he and I have been so busy just spending time with each other out in public that I haven’t read or seen anything, but prior to that I read pretty much everything. Some of them are actually funny, I love watching The Soup and those kinds of things. But when people get really mean and negative, I personally don’t understand it. There are people who are happy with my decision, and there are people who aren’t, but all that matters is that I’m happy and Ed and I are going to be together forever.”

More from Ed and Jillian:

Was it hard to keep the secret from the end of taping to the finale airing?

Jillian: “We told our parents, and I have a really good girlfriend who pretty much lives with me so I think she pretty much knew what was going on. I think Ed had a few fans who knew. I slipped up once. I was buying a pair of jeans, and I decided not to buy them, they were too expensive, and I told the girl I wanted to save my money for when I got to Chicago. And she was like, ‘Oh my god, oh my god!’ That was literally a week before the finale so she kept tight-lipped about it.”

Are you anxious at all about bringing your relationship from the TV world out into the real world?

Ed: “(Being on the show) was definitely much more real than I anticipated and I really don’t have any anxiety about this. We’re very comfortable with each other. We spent a lot of time together, while I’m working, and trying to accommodate each other’s schedules, it just seems as though everything is working out great right now.”

How much did the talk with host Chris Harrison help in your final decision to choose Ed?

Jillian: “The thing was, I woke up that day knowing that I was madly in love with Ed and that I wanted to leave that day with him. For me the hardest part was how do you execute that. Breaking somebody’s heart. At the time I didn’t know Reid was coming back, but I knew I really adored Kiptyn. I didn’t want to hurt him, I didn’t want to let him go, but I wanted to be with Ed. That was no question. When Reid came back, his proposal and his feelings were so shocking and threw me for such a loop. I couldn’t believe that he was there, I couldn’t believe things that he was saying. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what to do and that I was confused, it was like, how do I tell this person? What do I say? I’m a very giving person, and I always want to make people happy, so part of me was like, is there anything I can do or say right now to make Reid feel good, to make Reid walk away from this feeling good about himself. . (But) there was no way for me to do that.”

What did you think of the volcano erupting clip they showed at the end of your last Fantasy Suite night together?

Ed: “I actually got a kick out of that. I thought it was funny.”

Jillian: “We were watching that together. I was wondering how that was going to be put together and when we saw it we were howling. I had tears coming down my eyes I was laughing so hard.”

Thoughts on who the next Bachelor should be?

Ed: “Tanner P. 100% A lot of people don’t know this but Tanner P. was one of the guys I bonded with early on, Reid and Tanner P., we had a good camaraderie. Tanner P. is a very genuine, good guy, family-oriented, funny guy. He’s a bit shallow sometimes but a great guy.”

Jillian: “I love (Michael) Stagliano. I think Reid would make a great Bachelor.”

• Fashion note: For those who were wond
  ering: Jillian’s vintage dress from the finale was designed by Cennamo Couture, her necklace was by Nadri, and the engagement ring Ed chose is by Neil Lane, a diamond and platinum ring set with a pear-shaped diamond, weighing 2.05 carats, worth US$60,000.

Photo: Jillian Harris and Ed Swiderski in Hawaii during the final episode of The Bachelorette.