Meet the editorial team
Editors writing about weddings, events, and the business of planning them. Each covers a specific beat, so you always get the person who has actually done the work.
Negin Kazemian, PhD
Founder & Head of Editorial
Negin is the founder and CEO of Okanagan Wedding Company, a wedding and events rental business she runs from Fort Langley, BC, and Head of Editorial for our planning library. She holds a PhD in microbiome research from UBC Okanagan, where she was named an Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholar, and her work has been cited hundreds of times across 12 peer-reviewed papers. She also serves as Director of Research at PositionScale. Born in Tehran and raised in Kelowna, she writes about Persian traditions, the cross-cultural realities of modern weddings, and how to plan one without losing your mind or the meaning.
23 pieces published →
Priya Iyer
South Asian Weddings Editor
Priya is the South Asian Weddings Editor, covering Hindu (North and South), Punjabi Sikh, and fusion ceremonies. She grew up between Chennai and Toronto and had attended 31 weddings before she was 28, which is how she ended up writing about them. She holds an MA in Cultural Studies from McGill, and spent the early part of her career at South Asian lifestyle publications before joining the team to build out the cultural coverage at real editorial depth. She lives in Montreal and is usually, by a reasonable margin, the person at any given wedding who knows where the mic is.
9 pieces published →
Mei-Lin Chen
East Asian Weddings Editor
Mei-Lin is the East Asian Weddings Editor, covering Chinese tea ceremony, Guo Da Li, and the logistics of multi-generational family events. A third-generation Chinese-Canadian and former food editor, she shifted to wedding writing after planning her own four-country, three-ceremony wedding in 2022, an experience that produced both a marriage and a working spreadsheet she still references on deadline. She writes about the intersection of tradition and practicality, and she is particular about tea. She lives in Vancouver.
3 pieces published →
Emma Hart
Western Weddings & Budget Editor
Emma is the Western Weddings and Budget Editor, covering the money math, timeline politics, and the negotiation tactics most couples never learn until it is too late. She spent the first decade of her career as a wedding photographer, shooting more than two hundred ceremonies across British Columbia and Alberta before moving to the writing side of the industry. She now focuses on the parts of a wedding that do not photograph well: contracts, deposit schedules, venue walk-throughs, and the quiet conversations with vendors in the hour before doors open. She lives in Kelowna.
21 pieces published →
James Whitfield
Corporate & Professional Planner Editor
James is the Corporate Events and Professional Planner Editor, writing about the business of running a planning firm, corporate event logistics, and the operational layer most couple-facing coverage skips. He spent fifteen years in event production, the last five of them running his own shop with a team of three, before moving to editorial. He covers pricing models, margins, contract structures, and the vendor-side relationships planners live or die by. He lives in Austin.
2 pieces published →