Bridal stylist Samantha Ruiz first met Daniel Williams at The Bungalow in Santa Monica. “Proof that love indeed can be found in a hopeless place,” she laughs. Samantha had been talking to a friend when a fight broke out nearby. “A stray punch was coming towards me, and Dan pulled me out of the way. Rather than feeling confused or alarmed by the fact that I found myself in a stranger’s arms, I remember feeling an overall sense of calm and safety.” The two got to talking and since that night, have been inseparable.
Seven years later, Dan proposed during a summer visit to Vail. “I will start this off by saying I was completely shocked when Dan proposed,” Samantha notes. The couple had set out to bike Vail Pass and packed a picnic for the ride. They found a spot on top of a cliff, and after eating, Samantha started hiking back down, but Dan called her back to him. Under a pine tree, he proposed with her mother’s ring, which was especially sentimental, as she had passed when Samantha was a teenager.
However, the ring’s journey didn’t stop there. “After Dan proposed, I found out that my mom had lost her original ring years and years ago and the one I had was a fake replica,” Samantha explains. Secretly, her friend, Susie Saltzman, and Dan worked to recreate the original and present it to the bride during the wedding.
The planning process began with an easy decision—Las Vegas. For the first of their two celebrations, they wed in the iconic Little White Chapel on March 9, 2024. The larger fête took more time. “When I finally found Masseria Spina, I knew it was the one,” the bride says of her venue. “We loved that it was unique, organic, and checked all our boxes.”
Planned by Santa Vigante of Italian Boutique Weddings, the Italian celebration was captured on July 5, 2024, by photographer Vanessa Todd and videographer Jacob Heston.
Samantha’s Las Vegas wedding wardrobe began in a city with a slightly different aesthetic. A trip to Paris led her to a vintage crochet and pearl robe that became her “day before” first look. “My photographer literally sewed me into it,” she recalls. While in the city, her friend Nikeen of ASAR London offered to create her dream dress. “Over the course of one month, we worked together on the design and he shipped it to me in LA. I tried it on for the first time less than a week before our ceremony, and it was absolutely perfect.”
For the Italian celebration, Samantha sought designers whose artistry aligned with her own values, traveling through Los Angeles, New York, and Paris before sourcing a vintage Philippa Lepley gown once worn by a countess in the 1990s. In collaboration with ASAR London, Maison Takarah, and Katherine Tash, she curated three additional looks for the day’s events. Susie provided her beautiful wedding weekend jewelry. Luciana Vendola and Roma 2.0 Salon applied her day of hair and makeup looks.
The ceremony in Las Vegas was, at first, a question mark. “We had no idea what to expect from a ceremony conducted by an Elvis impersonator, but it was actually the perfect blend between fun, lighthearted, and emotional,” Samantha shares. The experience unfolded with a mix of charm and surprise—Elvis forgot their names, Dan’s nephew walked her down what she described as the world’s shortest aisle, and Dan presented her with the recreation of her mother’s engagement ring. “The day fully exceeded our expectations.”
Moments before arriving at the chapel, the couple realized they had forgotten the marriage certificate. “We were about 10 minutes away from the chapel and cutting it close, when I looked at Dan and said, you have the marriage certificate, right? He did not,” the bride laughs. After alerting Nobu Hotel, the certificate was messengered via black car, so the couple could make their time slot.
After the ceremony, they gathered with close friends for dinner at The Pepper Club. “We laughed, we cried, we did shots—it was perfectly intimate, fun, and sweet,” she recalls. Later that evening, the group continued the celebration at the Vanderpump Cocktail Garden before turning in for the night.
As for Italy, “Is it cheesy to say, ‘perfect?’” she asks. They exchanged personal vows and a friend read the seven Hebrew blessings. When they realized they had forgotten their wedding bands, guests lent theirs. During Dan’s vows, a bee flew into her veil. “The ceremony was filled with laughter, joy, and sentimental moments. It was beautiful and perfect and everything I could have wanted.”
In the lead-up, she had worried that the absence of her family would feel heavy. “Not having my parents or sister there was something that weighed heavily on my mind,” she says. “And yes, I felt their absence, but more than that I felt joy, love and light.”
In the days that followed, she wrote:
How do I put the past week into words? 10, 30, 50 years from now we’ll smile and say remember when…remember when we forgot to rehearse our first dance, remember when that bee got stuck in my veil? Remember the faces? The faces of our loved ones who looked on at us with tears in their eyes that reflected our own. My life has been marred with loss—the loss of my mom, my sister, my dad. But on this day, it wasn’t loss I felt. I felt an overwhelming ease, I felt love, I felt full of joy and laughter. I felt everything, all at once in the most bubbly, exciting way. Dan and I married in Puglia, Italy after 9 years together. My entire life I had specific ideas of what my wedding day would look like; my dad would walk me down the aisle and my mom and I would plot and plan perfection. My wedding was nothing like I expected—there weren’t color swatches or matching bridesmaids, no father-daughter dance, no three-tier cake with an heirloom topper, there weren’t even wedding bands. But it was perfect, it was everything I didn’t know to dream of.
The reception felt more like a dinner party than a formal affair, surrounded by friends and family. During cocktail hour, magician Mark Gibson entertained the guests, followed by the couple’s first dance to a live rendition of “You’re Still the One” by their friend Ben Johnson. After the Le Cucine de Spina millefoglie cake and a round of bottle sparklers, Antonello Gentile had the dance floor full long past the original 3 a.m. curfew. “We dreamed of dancing into the night and we did,” the bride concludes.
