Reimagining What A Wedding Should Be with Bride Leila

Bride to Have Been

Show Summary

In today’s world, trying to get married has become... a hot mess. So, to all the COVID brides to have been, grooms and wedding professionals: you’re not alone. Welcome to Bride To Have Been, a StudioPod original podcast hosted by Emily Lewis, with the purpose of building a community by sharing the reality of this new normal in the wedding industry. Let’s keep inspiring each other and celebrate the thing we treasure the most: love.

From a surprise proposal in Maui to half a dozen wedding mishaps during shelter-in-place, Bride Leila wasn’t always rolling with the punches. Eventually though, after the couple had to postpone their destination wedding in San Diego indefinitely, they hired a local elopement coordinator and her fiance stepped in to make some of the biggest decisions, building in many sentimental surprises along the way that would make their wedding worthy of a Hollywood storyline.

Jump straight into:

(12:24) - Leila on being proposed to - “I am like crying and I'm holding him on my knees and I didn't even grab the ring. I was just like, I am with you.”

(17:35) - On thinking her wedding date in October 2020 was safe - “I had a wedding planner and she was encouraging people to postpone to September. And so in my mind, I was like, well, she has her finger on the pulse of the wedding industry. Those brides had to cancel twice. Maybe even more than twice.”

(19:40) - On moving their original wedding date - “People would ask, ‘What do you think you're going to do for fall? And I was like, ‘I really don't want to talk about it. I will let you know when I decide. You will probably get an email from me and that will be the only time we discuss it.’”

(24:56) - On her 4-hour bachelorette party over Zoom - “We had a mixologist on and teach us how to make drinks.”

(25:08) - On making the Zoom bachelorette part memorable - “It was like really leaning into re-imagining what it's like to connect. What it's like to have a gathering. What's the purpose of these things.”

(31:37) - Planning the elopement - “Should we elope in a park or in a monument area or a location in San Francisco? Should we elope at our house in Oakland? And as those conversations started to continue, my imagination and my sort of design creative mindset was completely tapped out.”

(39:11) - On not allowing anyone to attend their elopement - “One of the hardest parts about changing what the wedding was going to look like and the location was telling our parents.”

(42:52) - On their wedding night dinner - “We had all these plans for dinner but we love this dumpling place in San Francisco, so we just grabbed To-go in our outfits and were like, ‘Thank you so much. Bye.’”

Resources

Follow Leila on Instagram

The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker

Thanks for listening! Follow us on Instagram, don’t forget to use the #COVIDBrideTribe, and feel free to send us your COVID wedding stories. Bride To Have Been is a podcast brought to you by GiftPod and produced at StudioPod. Edits were made at Nodalab and music was produced by GaryOAKland. Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and share with all of your fellow brides.