Lily Collins Talks Wedding Planning Amid COVID-19 Pandemic Plus Advice

Lily Collins and her fiance Charlie McDowell. Photo: Instagram.

Actress Lily Collins has had an eventful 2020 to say the least. Her new Netflix series “Emily in Paris” was a huge success and she recently announced it’s being renewed for a second season. OH, and she got engaged in September to director Charlie McDowell, the son of actress Mary Steenburgen and English actor Malcolm McDowell.

Collins, the daughter of singer Phil Collins, recently spoke to Entertainment Tonight about her new film “Mank,” streaming on Netflix starting Dec. 4, and she also talked about her engagement and the crazy year she’s had.

“I’m so excited,” she said, giving ET a look at her unique engagement ring. Instead of a classic solitaire diamond engagement ring, her ring includes a pink-hued “one-of-a-kind rose-cut diamond” with a bezel setting and thin gold band, as reported by People.

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After her yellow gold engagement ring made its appearance on screen, she added, “You know, I think it’s been a really interesting time to self-reflect and to think about prioritizing, and kind of just thinking about so much stuff while we’ve been at home, and to be able to bring two projects to people right now through Netflix globally is a huge gift. And to make people laugh and smile with ‘Emily in Paris,’ God knows that’s what we all need to do more of right now, and then with ‘Mank’, I feel like there’s a nostalgia for the world that once was that we’re already all feeling, so there’s that way to connect with people through that.”

“And it’s so funny when we got engaged, so many friends and family were like, ‘Thank you,'” she continued. “I’m like, ‘Why?’ They’re like, ‘Thank you for giving us something to look forward to. I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, we totally did it for you guys.’ But it has been … yeah, I’m very grateful. I’m grateful for a lot of things right now.”

Collins also said she and McDowell are enjoying wedding planning.

“It’s like, this is like a fun part,” she said. “You get to think about all those things, you know, as a young girl, thinking like, ‘Ooh, what do I want one day?’ It’s like, now you get to actually play and have conversations about it.”

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Ironically enough, Brides magazine recently published a guide about wedding planning with expert advice from Nicole-Natassha Goulding, the owner of luxury wedding planning service Chic by Nicole. She has been planning weddings in Montreal since 2015 and has won multiple awards for her events, according to the magazine.

Goulding outlines how far in advance couples should start wedding planning, how much time to set aside for major decisions, and what to consider if you’re planning a destination wedding. She lists the priorities of “what to do first,” like booking a venue and finding a wedding dress, and even goes into smaller details that couples might think are not a big deal at all (which turn out later to be very important).

Whether you decide to hire a wedding planner or not, Goulding said many couples also keep a wedding planning binder or an Excel spreadsheet to help them keep track of everything. She advises writing everything down (big or small) that needs to be done. “Listing out the tasks that need to be completed each month is crucial to ensuring all the T’s are crossed and I’s are dotted for the day,” she explained.

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