Love Is Blind alum Giannina Gibelli took her time walking down the aisle to contrast her speedy near-nuptials on the pod dating experiment.
“You’re boyfriend and girlfriend for however long, but you’re fiancés for such a short amount of time, and so I really wanted to just feel that and understand what that felt like,” Giannina, 33, exclusively told Us during a joint interview with new husband Blake Horstmann on Thursday, July 23, while promoting their “He Said, G Said” podcast. “I don’t ever bring in any of my baggage from Love Is Blind because I don’t have so many trauma points … [but] I just didn’t like the six-week period of being engaged.”
Giannina appeared on the first season of Netflix’s Love Is Blind, which aired in 2020. The reality TV star found love with Damian Powers inside the pods during the 10-day experiment and, by the end, they each proposed sight unseen. Giannina and Damian, 35, only met in person after getting engaged. Their road to the altar, however, was turbulent with many arguments about their lifestyles and relationship along the way. While Giannina planned to say “I do,” Damian declined before the pair went their separate ways.
Giannina moved on with Blake, 37, in 2021 after meeting on Paramount+’s All Star Shore. The couple got engaged in October 2024, months after welcoming son Heath.
“I just didn’t want to feel anything remotely close to what I felt like on Love Is Blind,” Giannina told Us on Thursday, referring to her long engagement. “I was like, ‘If we have a nice, long engagement and I can call you my fiancé, we can just really settle into it and just take our time planning.’ Literally, what’s the rush? We had a baby; we weren’t trying to get pregnant.”
She continued, “It was lovely. It was a good year and a half.”
Giannina and Blake finally tied the knot in a romantic destination wedding in Croatia last month in front of son Heath, 2, and many of their reality TV peers.
“It was the best day of our lives, literally, and for, like, a week after when we came home, I was just jet-lagged waking at 5 a.m. and I was like, ‘Who am I now? Being a bride for a year and a half was lovely,’” Giannina quipped to Us. “Now, [we are] settling into our solid foundation, which was nice.”
Giannina and Blake further noted that they share the same favorite part of the entire wedding weekend.
“I really love the boat ride that I had going from the mainland to the island where we were getting married,” she said. “It was such a moment for me to be like, ‘Oh my God, it’s happening,’ and my happy place being on the water and all of that. It was a time for me to just have that for myself before, like, fully giving myself. I mean, we are very committed, but before saying ‘I do’ in front of our family and friends, that was lovely.”
As Blake and Giannina settle into their newlywed routine, they also recently launched a joint podcast.
“We do literally everything together … but it works for us,” Blake told Us of recording “He Said, G Said” episodes. “We’ve been working really hard on that. Now, we can dive fully into that because we kind of started that in the middle of wedding planning.”
In addition to interviewing celebrity guests, the married couple have used their platform to set up single reality TV stars with each other.
“We obviously love doing double dates, so [with] couples, we love having them and getting their, you know, point of view on love and relationships and families, especially moms and dads and parenting,” the Bachelor Nation alum said. “Then, we have ‘Star-Crossed’ as a part of that.”
Giannina believes the duo carved a niche in the love and relationships podcast space since they “have been in [guests’] shoes.”
“I can really relate to so many of the things that they’re saying or see things from a perspective that I just never even imagined, and so it is really genuine conversations that we’re having,” Giannina said. “We have conversations with our guests, and at the end of the day, everyone just feels so enlightened and really informed, and I feel like we’re making great relationships with just everyone that walks through that door.”
