Courtesy photo
Basalt local Sammi Jo Woodard stars as one of the featured brides in TLC’s “Say Yes to the Dress: America,” which the network is promoting as its “biggest wedding spectacular ever.” Featuring one bride from every state, this 10-part series premiered on Jan. 4 and runs through mid-March.
Woodard’s episiode airs Saturday, Jan. 18.
Host Randy Fenoli travels across the country to surprise ten prominently featured brides from Georgia, West Virginia, Colorado, Texas, Arizona, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, Michigan, California and New York. He gets a taste of their hometown life before sending them to New York to find the perfect wedding dress.
As the chosen bride from the state of Colorado, Woodard’s episode shows off what a day in Woodard’s life is like with fiancé, Andy, living in a log cabin up Frying Pan Road.
“I’m seven miles up there, so it’s about halfway to Ruedi, but still out of cell range,” Woodard said in a recent interview at Roxy’s Market. “I’m actually miles out of cell range. I have Wi-Fi, but they should call it mountain Wi-Fi. It works when it chooses to. Living up there has taught me a lot of patience.”
Woodard doesn’t lead the typical millennial lifestyle. To start, she has no social media whatsoever and never has. She and Andy live off the grid and chop wood for their source of heat.
“Literally just yesterday, we spent a couple hours splitting wood and stacking wood,” Woodard said. “That’s most of our heat. So, that’s a big part of my life. We call it wood season.”
Woodard has been following the show since it started in 2007, and she can remember watching the series in high school with her mother. On her first trip to New York City in January 2019, she begged her fiancé to go to Kleinfeld Bridal—the wedding dress boutique made famous by “Say Yes to the Dress” that boasts the largest selection of wedding dresses in the world.
“The only place I wanted to see was Kleinfeld,” Woodard said. “I had the whole family get in a cab and go there. At first, they told me I couldn’t come into the showroom. Then Paula (a wedding consultant on the show) came outside and saw me just losing it. She was like, ‘I’m going to take this girl in and give her a tour.’ I met everybody there, including Randy.”
Once the staff at Kleinfeld witnessed how excited Woodard was to be there, the owner came out to greet her and encouraged her to apply to be on the show.
After Woodard applied online, she was contacted by the show’s casting team. They interviewed her over Skype, sent in a required video submission as well as photos of her and Andy. A couple months later, the “Say Yes” team told Woodard that they were going to fly to Aspen for a visit and to “see how she read on camera.” But in reality, this May 2019 visit was the moment that Randy came to her cabin up the Frying Pan and surprised her with the news that she was going to be on the show.
When it came time to pick out her dress in New York in June, Woodard brought her two older sisters, mother-in-law and her Aunt Lisa. With the passing of her mother three years ago, Woodward was thankful that these family members came out to support her and be on the show.
“My mom would have been so happy to be a part of this, especially because we used to watch the show together,” Woodard said. “My Aunt Lisa has since stepped into that mom role for me”
“To say that I actually got to go to Kleinfeld and ‘Say Yes to the Dress’ in New York is a dream,” Woodard said. “I’ve wanted this my whole life. It still feels like a dream. I am just so thankful.”
The big “Say Yes to the Dress: America” season will culminate with all 52 couples getting married in Central Park as Randy officiates and each couple says “I do” in unison.
“It’s really nerve-racking, because you’re essentially getting married, but in a very unconventional way,” Woodard said of the ceremony, filmed in July. “It just felt like a dream the whole time. I’m standing there in my wedding dress walking through Central Park.”
Tune in Saturday night on TLC to catch Woodard’s featured episode where she had the opportunity to show off the town of Basalt and the beautiful Frying Pan Road area.