Attorney Rachel Lindsay, 33, gave her final rose to chiropractor Bryan Abasolo, 39, on Season 13 of The Bachelorette in 2017, and now their wedding plans are finally in motion. Rachel revealed that she and her fiancé will tie the knot in August 2019, during an EXCLUSIVE interview on HollywoodLife’s upcoming podcast episode, airing March 15. “My wedding planner has been very strict about me not giving out the exact date or location, but it will be in the Caribbean,” Rachel told us. “So it’s going to be hot. August in the Caribbean.” But the beauty won’t be battling the humidity in a pantsuit, which Rachel had originally thought she might wear to her wedding.
“It may come as a shock to people to hear I’m getting a wedding gown, because I was very emphatic about wanting a wedding suit. That’s all I wanted to wear, was a pantsuit,” the lawyer explained to HollywoodLife. But it was Rachel’s New York City-based designer, Randi Rahm, who ended up changing her mind. “So it was like I met Bryan in a Randi Rahm [dress], he proposed to me in a Randi Rahm [gown], it just makes perfect sense. I have a great relationship with her,” Rachel said of the designer, who has provided couture pieces for The Bachelorette. After Rachel’s season finale wrapped in Aug. 2017, the ABC star wanted to extend her relationship with the designer.
“I’m so connected to her dresses, I know it sounds weird but — they just had so much personality and I reached out to her, and we’ve had a relationship ever since the show. I mean I had dinner with her last night,” Rachel revealed, adding, “And so she’s doing my dress and I just feel like she gets me, and so that’s very exciting.” But what finally convinced Rachel to switch her wedding wear plan to a gown from a pantsuit was that Randi said to her: “‘You want to wear something that you can’t emulate on a red carpet. You want it to be for you, you want it to speak to Bryan and I thought, ‘That’s why you’re a wedding dress designer. You just got my mind right. And now I want to wear a dress.'”
There won’t be a “heavy” number of “Bachelor Nation” stars that will get to see Rachel in her wedding dress on the big day. But she does plan on having some of the ladies from Nick Viall’s season of The Bachelor in the pews, as she competed alongside them before becoming the “Bachelorette.” “So I’m close with Astrid [Loch], Raven [Gates], Alexis [Waters], Whitney [Fransway], Kristina [Schulman], Corinne [Olympios]…Those are people that I talk to regularly. I am very fortunate with the group of girls I was on Nick’s season with. They’re just a different breed,” Rachel mused. And she’s expecting some of these ladies’ plus ones to be Adam Gottschalk (Raven’s boyfriend) and Kevin Wendt (Astrid’s boyfriend).
But the groom-to-be didn’t become close friends with his Bachelorette competitors, according to Rachel. “It’s weird, when you win for lack of better words, you’re kind of separated from the other men….So you don’t have that camaraderie that those guys have,” Rachel revealed. However, she did say that Bryan is still close with Matthew “Matt” Munson and Eric Bigger, who also vied for Rachel’s rose. And, yes — the “Bachelor Nation” host, Chris Harrison, is of course invited!
There’ll even be behind-the-scenes crew members to witness Rachel and Bryan exchange vows. “I’m inviting several people around the scenes,” Rachel told HollywoodLife, admitting she grew close with the show’s makeup artist and with the stylist. “Kerry the stylist is going to come to my final fitting, so I still talk to these people. I’m still close to them. And so they’ll be at the wedding,” Rachel said.
Before the wedding goes down though, keep up with Rachel by tuning into her new ESPN talk show! “I do a sports talk show and it’s called GTL, it’s 12 to 4 PM ET on ESPN radio, the app, and Sirius XM channel 80,” Rachel said. “I’m with two other guys on the show, we have so much fun doing, you should definitely tune in.” Stay tuned for HollywoodLife’s podcast on Friday to hear Rachel’s thoughts about the newest lovebirds to emerge from The Bachelor, Colton Underwood and Cassie Randolph.