“Since both of our work schedules are so crazy we had only one weekend-72 hours-in March when we could travel to Italy to taste food, see flowers, linens, cutlery, plates, and glassware in person,” Nina says. Toward the end of 2021, they sent out invites for the final time with a header that read “Third time the charm!” And like so many other couples, they did most of their wedding planning on Zoom, reviewing their color palettes and design schemes over the course of the two years. “As the world slowly started to open up in 2021, we had a family loss that caused us to be away from home for about eight or nine months which resulted in our having to change our plans again,” Nina says. The couple shifted their wedding date to be a year from July 9, 2020. “Like everyone else in the world, we weren’t sure how widespread it would be or how long any of it would last, so we had to cancel everything.”

“At the time, Italy was one of the hardest hit areas in the world, on a strict lockdown and closed to tourists,” Jay remembers. They eventually settled on Villa Mangiacane, a property surrounded by vineyards and olive groves in a small town called San Casciano in Tuscany.īut, like so many other couples, after months of planning and even sending out invitations, their plans were changed due to the pandemic. To that end, the two went to Italy to look for a wedding location in June of 2019, road-tripping for a week from Rome to Tuscany to Puglia and looking at about 15 venues and villas along the way. “We always knew we wanted to get married in Italy because going there was the first trip we ever took together,” Nina explains. Their mutual friend, creative director Tony Mancilla-who ended up getting ordained so he could officiate the couple’s wedding-introduced them.Īfter five years of dating, Jay proposed to Nina at sunset on Dreamland Beach in Bali in January of 2019, and they began planning their wedding shortly after. Actor Jay Ellis, who plays “Payback” in this summer’s blockbuster hit Top Gun: Maverick, met actor and model Nina Senicar in 2015 at a bar in Los Angeles.

Vogue magazine cover wall art