blooming

blooming

I’m deep in the world of marketing, social media, and never-ending to-do lists. I write copy, captions, blogs posts for a living, so why am I spending my free time writing this?

Because I hope one day I’ll look back at these words and notice the magic.

The happiness.

The growth.

Not in a perfect outline kind of way, but in a… I don’t want to forget this way, in a my body knows this matters before my brain does way.

I’ve learned that when something keeps tugging at me, it’s usually because it wants to be noticed.

I want to remember this season of my life.

“If this all ends tomorrow, this will be the coolest thing I’ve ever done.”

Meg said that to me on my very first shoot with Eddy. I was fresh, personally and professionally, (think Bambi-on-ice, trying to figure out how to stand while apologizing for taking up space). She told me that whenever she feels overwhelmed building Eddy, she comes back to that thought. It grounds her.

And I think about it all the time.

So no, I don’t have extra hours. And no, Substack is not exactly a necessary addition to my life. But do I want to document this wild, messy, potentially the coolest thing I’ll ever done, beautiful ride I’m on with words? Yes. I really do.

So here we are. Welcome to blooming- my long-winded, probably grammatically incorrect, very public place to put things down before they blur together.

I’m writing this from a plane back to Austin, still fresh from the week I just had.

Last week, I was in Topanga, California shooting lifestyle for Eddy’s Spring Collection. Every collection feels special, each one stretching us, sharpening us, but this one was different.

This one included the bridal capsule.

A capsule I designed alongside Meg. Pieces made for my own wedding, thoughtfully extended to the Eddy customer (first launch next month!!!). Inspired by designs and fabrics I sourced in Paris on a girl’s trip with my mom. The dresses, some I’ll wear to marry the love of my life, and others, my closest girls will wear standing beside me.

We shot lifestyle. We shot studio. I styled. Captured BTS. Coordinated logistics. Quite literally, juggled many hats.

And then, suddenly, the pieces were on real people. I fluffed skirts, adjusted straps, gently tried to remove faint spray-tan stains left over from my courthouse ceremony in October. Doing my best to recreate the vision I’d been carrying for so long.

The last hour of the studio shoot, slightly delirious, I looked up from fixing a train and saw Meg holding a veil, Kirby capturing it all. All our hands together, working to bring this to life, carry out the vision, make it art. For me to get married to the man I’ve grown up with and loved since I was 16.

There aren’t really words for that.

One morning in Topanga, I sat on the back porch as the sun came up. A long, chaotic day ahead. Tears quietly sitting in my eyes. I thought about 10-year-old me, sketchbooks, cut-up magazines, obsessed with mod-podge and creating anything possible with it. My mom is an angel on earth for dealing with me and the things I ruined, like her vintage Lilly Pulitzer shorts I cut to make my “own” (important note: I did this without asking).

I wanted to design clothes. I wanted to create.

When the time came to look at colleges, my mom and I went to NYC for my spring break and toured FIT in New York. We toured others, explored options and eventually, I talked myself into the “realistic” path- education and social work. The sensible choice.

And yet, no matter what I was doing over the last decade, creating kept pulling me back.

I wish I could go back and tell that ten year old Becca, the one struggling to follow her gut to study her passion, and that Bambi-like version of myself that not too long from then, she’d be waking up at 5am before a shoot for a collection she helped design, will help market, and will wear to marry the love of her life in Italy. That love being the same one she did long distance with, the one she was scared the “figuring it out” season might break, who stood beside her through it all, and then chose to do it for life.

After wrapping the shoots, my mom and sister flew in from North Carolina. They came to see the designs in person. To watch me try on my wedding dresses for the first time.

We cried.

We danced.

The dresses were perfect. The fabrics were incredible. From Givenchy’s 1955 campaign with Audrey Hepburn references, to the fabric my mom and I stumbled on in the depths of the Paris flea market, to vintage Dior inspired prints, to a custom toile print that tells the story of James and I.

But the details, while magic, weren’t the best part.

The best part was being there, together.

Celebrating something fleeting. Being present in a moment that’ll never happen again.

Life moves fast. Health isn’t guaranteed. Time is limited. That hit me hardest on the flight home, not in a sad way, but in a how lucky are we that this happened at all way.

This week will never exist again. And that’s what makes it special.

Weddings are loud. Stressful. The industry is obsessed with your wedding being “the best day of your life,” and I feel that pressure.

But what if we flipped it? What if it wasn’t just about the day, or even the weekend, but about the moments leading up to it too?

My dress try-on experience looked nothing like my sister’s if you compared details. But what was the same, was most important. We were together. Emotional. Present. Celebrating something that won’t come again.

I could focus on how hard the week was: back-to-back shoots, a piled-up inbox, launching a vault sale, an unexpected email from our travel agent about our unplanned honeymoon, fifty unanswered texts, product stuck in customs, coordinating wedding invitations, sleeping too little.

And yes, it was a lot. I felt it. But instead, I’m choosing to remember this:

Meg and Kirby turning to me with the softest eyes during the first shoot look- in my wedding dress. Explaining the details of the toile print to my mom and sister. Panic-washing spray tan off my courthouse dress, there from nervously sweating during the moment James and I legally said I do. Meg tying the dress on me, fluffing the back so they could see. Models walking through muddy fields in my dreamed designs. Making a moodboard at 5am in Meg’s living room while Andi and Jimmy asked me “why” a hundred times. Laughing our way through massive San Francisco hills in a cheap rental car, chanting “you’ve got this” to Hannah, knowing we’d be just as scared doing the very thing we so confidently encouraged. Whispering styling notes to Meg mid-shoot, only for her to say, “Yep. Just go do it. This is yours.” The fake ring I bought pre-engagement to figure out what stone shape I liked, that we now use as a photoshoot prop, getting lost in a muddy field. My mom crying the second she saw Meg. Hannah crying laughing at my mom taking photos of the Painted Ladies- something she didn’t understand, but loved anyway because Hannah and I did. Crying every single time Meg asked me how I felt.

When I’m old and grey, I won’t remember the exhaustion.

I’ll remember this.

There’s more to come. About the collection, wedding planning, life in marketing for a growing brand, the chaos of it all. But for now, this felt important to put down.

I realized this week how often I live in what’s next. The next trip. The next launch. The next thing. And how easily I forget to notice what’s happening now, the part that won’t be there later.

This is me trying to slow that down.

Putting fingers to keyboard. Documenting the happy tears on a plane. The best what the f* is happening moments. Being present enough to remember.

This is part of that.

xx