And just like that — Renée Oteri is married! The beautiful Bachelor 2014 star tied the knot to love Bracy Maynard on Thursday at the King County Courthouse in downtown Seattle. Wetpaint Entertainment chatted with the girl who found her great love after filming Juan Pablo Galavis’s season of The Bachelor.
“It was perfect!” Renée tells Wetpaint about her special day. “So small, just Bracy, Ben, my cousin Molly, her little girl, Desiree Hartsock, and [photographer] Andria [Lindquist]. She took the most beautiful shots.”
Indeed the gorgeous pics capture Renée and Bracy’s love perfectly, not that it's hard to make the duo look good. So, did new Seattle friend Des make the dress? “No but she loved it! I got it from a consignment shop for 50 dollars!” Renée boasts of her lovely look. “It’s from the 1970s, just ivory with lace. And I wore Payless shoes, did my own hair… I did the whole thing for under a hundred bucks!”
The groom wore a taupe suit with a peacock blue tie and tan shoes, a pink boutonniere attached to his lapel to coordinate with Renee’s pink and white flowers. “I did have peonies as my flowers. That was my one big thing,” she says of her minimalistic bouquet. Son Ben was dressed to the nines in khakis, a dress shirt, and a striped taupe tie.
“Our wedding bands were given as a gift from the wonderful people [Classic Creations] who made my engagement ring. I engraved on Bracy’s ‘My first, last, one and only’,” she says of the man who was her first kiss back when they were kids. “I still have the temporary one because they’re making mine. But we’ve been wearing the rings since we first got them. We couldn’t wait!”
Their romance and engagement are the sweetest stories, beginning when they were just kids. (“I even have it in my diary from when I was 12: I want to marry Bracy Maynard!” Renee gushes.) While they dated a few years after Renée’s divorce (from Ben's dad), they broke up in 2010, and lost touch for a while. It had been mostly long distance, with Renée living in Massachusetts and Bracy in Colorado. Fast forward to this past year, and everything changed.
While Bracy knew she was doing the show, they were just friends at that point. But after, he had moved to Florida, and she returned to her life in Sarasota. They were talking and they met up and totally hit it off. So when he got a new job in Seattle at the end of February, Bracy, Ben, and Renée packed up and moved west. It was during their house scouting trip that he proposed. Since then, they've been making a life for themselves in a new community and Ben just started school. "He's loving it," she tells Wetpaint of her now 9-year-old who celebrates his birthday the day after his mom's new anniversary.
“The best part of the whole day was when they said that we are married… we are officially married. I can't believe it. And when he read his vows to me, and when I tried to read mine,” she says with a laugh. “I bawled hysterically. We wrote our own vows, but I couldn’t even read them. I couldn’t even make it through a sentence. So, Bracy went first and of course he hand wrote his… And I read mine off my iPhone.”
So, what’s next for the two? A big change! Renée’s name, that is, as she says she plans to take Bracy’s last name. Then a honeymoon! “But not for a while. We are planning a big reception in September where we’re inviting all our friends,” the married lady spills. Does that include Juan Pablo? “I don’t know... he said in his blog he wanted to come!” the carefree girl laughs.
Sounds like a party! Congratulations and best wishes to Renée, Bracy, Ben, and their dog Chance!
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