Life & Lessons · October 12, 2026 · Dominique Moon
My husband, Elijah, proposed to me on March 10, 2024, the day of a new moon.
Which meant, as we later joked, he asked me to become a new Moon on a new moon.
At the time, it was just a sweet coincidence. We had no idea how important that little detail would become.
A few months later, I was scrolling Instagram when the algorithm did what the algorithm does best. It knew I was engaged.
I’d been looking at rings, dresses, venues, and all the things newly engaged women suddenly find themselves researching. Somewhere in that endless scroll, I came across an advertisement from Zion Springs, an all-inclusive wedding venue in Hamilton, Virginia.
They were giving away a $75,000 wedding.
Not a discount. Not a free engagement session.
An entire wedding.
When Elijah and I had talked about marriage, even before getting engaged, we’d agreed that we didn’t want to spend an outrageous amount of money on a wedding. We wanted our closest people there, and we wanted it to be beautiful, but we also had other financial priorities. We were perfectly willing to have a lovely dinner and put the money toward a house or paying down debt.
So when I saw the contest, I immediately told Elijah we needed to enter.
He was skeptical. Was this even real?
I had read the rules up and down, and I was convinced it was legitimate.
Besides, what did we have to lose?
Our engagement photograph, the little new moon detail that became part of the story.
Our First Entry Wasn’t Even Valid
I received an email from the Zion Springs team.
Our entry didn’t meet the requirements.
We weren’t alone. Dozens of other applicants had received the same message explaining that their submissions needed to be corrected.
The contest required an original Instagram Reel, no longer than 90 seconds, explaining why an all-inclusive, stress-free wedding would be ideal for us.
Thankfully, the team gave us an opportunity to correct our entry.
So Elijah, who is not exactly someone who jumps at the chance to be on camera, sat down with me. We recorded our little video, I edited it together, and we submitted a proper entry.
I wasn’t sure what would happen next, but at least we were in the running.
On July 18, we received another email.
A little later, we received another email.
We had been selected as semifinalists in the Zion Springs Best Day Ever Giveaway.
And now we had three days to make some noise.
The Part Where I Got a Little Shameless
The public voting window was short, which meant we had to get as many people as possible to watch our video, vote for us, and share it with someone else.
I was not an influencer. I wasn’t someone who constantly documented my life on social media, and I certainly wasn’t accustomed to repeatedly asking people for something.
I was not an influencer. I wasn’t someone who constantly documented my life on social media, and I certainly wasn’t accustomed to repeatedly asking people for something.
But I knew that winning would require more than quietly hoping for the best.
There was one surefire way to make sure we didn’t win, and that was not trying.
So I decided to get a little shameless.
I asked people to vote during work meetings. I posted on LinkedIn. I reached out to friends and family. I shared our story in a Raleigh Facebook group with approximately 50,000 members, explaining that we were a local couple who had gotten engaged at Lake Raleigh and were trying to win our wedding.
Based on the responses to that Facebook post, I estimated that it brought us around 300 votes.
Our families were texting the link to everyone they knew. Friends were reposting our content. My best friend and eventual maid of honor, Nina, was helping spread the word, along with her family and their networks.
My LinkedIn community showed up in a way that genuinely surprised me. People shared our posts, left encouraging comments, and helped us reach audiences I never could have reached on my own.
Our campaign generated thousands of online engagements and impressions.
And behind the scenes, I was working.
Some nights, I stayed up until two or three in the morning editing videos and preparing content.
What made this experience particularly uncomfortable was the visibility.
There’s something vulnerable about telling everyone you want something before you know whether you’re going to get it.
If you quietly pursue something and fail, nobody necessarily knows.
But when you announce your dream to thousands of people and ask them to believe in it with you, you’re giving everyone a front-row seat to the possibility that it might not work out.
I had to become willing to be seen trying.
And as uncomfortable as that was, something beautiful happened.
People believed in us.
One of the campaign posts we shared while rallying votes and support.
All I Needed Was Two Clicks
One of my favorite lessons from this entire experience is about community.
Voting for us required almost nothing from any one person. Just two clicks.
Click the link. Click the vote button.
But those two clicks, multiplied by hundreds of people, had the potential to change our lives.
And people showed up.
Not just the people closest to us, either. Coworkers, acquaintances, old friends, people we’d never met.
Some people had audiences much larger than mine, and they generously shared our story with their own communities.
I started thinking about how fortunate I was to have relationships that I could lean on. Not because I had built those relationships with the intention of asking for something someday, but because we’d spent years showing up for one another in different ways.
Now, people were showing up for us.
We received the news.
We were officially one of the top three finalist couples.
That meant we had won one of the three wedding packages.
We just didn’t know which one.
The grand prize was an all-inclusive weekend wedding valued at approximately $75,000, with up to 125 guests.
And to win it, we would have to make one final presentation.
Sometimes the Preparation Comes First
Later that summer, the final stage of the competition would take place at Zion Springs’ alumni dinner, where former brides and grooms would hear our stories and cast their votes.
Each finalist couple would have an opportunity to present.
Earlier that year, I had hosted the main stage at SAS Innovate, speaking in front of an audience of thousands. As part of preparing for that opportunity, I’d received professional speaking coaching from Karin Reed, who helped me understand the importance of preparation, clarity, and making a message memorable.
I had no idea those lessons would become useful in a competition for my own wedding.
Elijah, who considers himself an introvert, didn’t have the same stage experience.
So we prepared together.
We built a PowerPoint presentation with photographs from our childhoods, our families, and our early dating years. We included screenshots of our social media campaign and the incredible support we’d received.
We wrote a script that allowed us to alternate speaking.
And we practiced.
A lot.
I wanted us to walk into that room knowing we’d done everything we could to make our case.
Forget the Business Cards. Let’s Make Bracelets.
During our preparation, someone from Zion Springs suggested that we might want to mingle with the alumni before the presentation and perhaps hand out business cards.
Business cards?
For a wedding competition?
I wanted to give people something a little more memorable.
So I decided to make charm bracelets.
My best friend and I found little moon and celestial charms online and spent time assembling bracelets in different colors and styles. Some were gold, some silver, some beaded.
Each one had a personal touch.
The moon charms were especially fitting because we’d been telling the story of Elijah proposing to me under a new moon.
And the grand-prize wedding was scheduled for March 15, 2025, under a full moon.
A new Moon to a full Moon.
Full circle.
For the gentlemen, we decorated miniature mint tins with labels that said, “Mint to Be Moon.”
It was a little cheesy, and I loved it.
The plan was simple. I’d wear the bracelets stacked on my wrists, let the women choose whichever one they liked, and give the men the mints.
When we arrived at the alumni dinner, my arms were covered in bracelets, my purse was full of mint tins, and Elijah had stuffed as many tins into his pockets as he could carry.
We were ready to make some friends.
Charm bracelets and mint tins from the final presentation weekend.
The Place Where We Knew We’d Get Married
We drove from Raleigh to Hamilton, Virginia, arriving at Zion Springs the day before the final presentation.
The venue had arranged complimentary accommodations for us, and the hosts made us feel incredibly welcome.
The next morning, we toured the estate.
The manor house, the beautiful grounds, the ceremony space, the reception barn.
It was surreal.
We knew we were getting married there. We just didn’t know whether we’d be celebrating on a Thursday, a Saturday, or enjoying the entire weekend.
After the tour, we returned to our room and continued practicing.
That evening, we entered the alumni dinner and began meeting the former Zion Springs couples.
Some of them already recognized us from our campaign. They’d seen our videos, followed our progress, and watched us rally our community.
I started handing out bracelets.
Interestingly, the bracelets became a useful little system for remembering whom we’d already met. If I saw a bracelet on someone’s wrist, I knew we’d spoken. If I didn’t, there was another person to introduce myself to.
We chatted, laughed, and did our best to make a genuine connection with as many people as possible.
Then dinner was served.
It was delicious, from what I remember of the few bites I managed to eat.
We were so nervous.
A quiet engagement-season photo from the chapter before the wedding.
Put the Notes Down
When it was time for the presentations, the other two finalist couples went before us.
And Elijah and I noticed something immediately.
Neither couple used notes.
We looked at each other and realized we couldn’t walk up there clutching our scripts.
We’d practiced enough. We knew our story.
We were going to have to trust ourselves.
So we put the notes down.
When it was our turn, we stood in front of the room and shared who we were.
We talked about our families, our childhoods, how we met, and how we fell in love.
We shared the story of our new moon engagement.
We showed the results of our social media campaign, and I explained that I wasn’t an influencer or someone with a huge online following. I was simply a woman who saw an extraordinary opportunity and decided to use every skill and relationship available to give us a chance.
I remembered the speaking lessons I’d learned earlier that year.
Breathe. Connect with the audience. Make your message clear.
And when the nerves showed up, I tried to interpret them as excitement.
By the time we finished, I felt we’d given it everything we had.
Whatever happened next, I didn’t want to look back and wonder whether we could have tried harder.
And the Winner Is…
After the presentations, ballots were distributed.
Elijah and I stepped outside to the bar and finally had our first drink of the evening. We even took a shot with someone from another finalist couple while the results were being tallied.
Eventually, everyone was called back into the dining hall.
The team began announcing the winners.
One of the other couples was called.
Then another.
And suddenly, Elijah and I realized what that meant.
We had won the grand prize.
The all-inclusive, $75,000 weekend wedding.
I cried.
I remember feeling like my entire body was vibrating.
I thought about the late nights, the videos, the posts, the messages, the votes, the bracelets, and all those people who had decided to believe in us.
I thought about how we had walked into the competition not knowing whether we’d win anything at all.
And now, here we were.
We’d won our dream wedding.
I was overwhelmed with gratitude.
And once the adrenaline finally started to wear off, I was especially grateful that Zion Springs brought out late-night sliders.
Because after barely touching dinner, I was starving.
So, Was It Luck?
Absolutely.
I was lucky that an advertisement for the contest appeared on my Instagram feed.
I was lucky that the team gave us an opportunity to correct our entry.
I was lucky that so many people were willing to support us.
I was lucky to have received public speaking coaching months before I knew I’d need it for something so personal.
And I was lucky that our story resonated with the people in that room.
But I think we sometimes talk about luck as though it’s something that simply happens to us.
This experience changed that for me.
Because I could have seen the advertisement and kept scrolling.
We could have received the email about our invalid entry and given up.
I could have decided that asking people to vote for me was embarrassing.
I could have convinced myself that I wasn’t a social media person and therefore wasn’t qualified to compete.
I could have protected myself from the possibility of publicly failing.
And if I’d done any of those things, I probably wouldn’t be writing this story.
Luck gave me an opportunity.
It didn’t make me take it.
A Full Moon and a Full Circle Moment
On March 15, 2025, Elijah and I were married at Zion Springs.
Under the full moon.
The wedding was everything we could have hoped for. The team handled the planning with care, and we were able to celebrate with the people who had helped make the entire experience possible.
There was something particularly meaningful about looking around that day and seeing so many of the people who’d clicked the link, shared the posts, encouraged us, and believed that we could actually win.
Our wedding wasn’t the only thing that changed.
Because we didn’t have to take on the expense of a traditional wedding, we were able to put more of our money toward building our future. Later that year, we purchased our first home together.
And personally, the experience changed how I thought about putting myself out there.
It gave me a little more courage to be visible.
To share my goals before I knew whether I’d accomplish them.
To ask for help.
To take a chance on something that seemed just a little too good to be true.
The following year, Zion Springs even hired me to help promote the next iteration of the giveaway, turning an experience that began with an Instagram ad into a professional creative opportunity.
Funny how that works.
Our ceremony at Zion Springs in Hamilton, Virginia.
Redefining Luck
I don’t believe hard work guarantees that everything will go your way.
I don’t believe every opportunity is meant for everyone, or that people who don’t win simply didn’t try hard enough.
Chance is real. Timing matters. Circumstances matter.
And sometimes, things really do just fall into place.
But I’ve come to believe that luck can also be something we participate in.
Sometimes it’s recognizing an opportunity that others might overlook.
Sometimes it’s the courage to try something before you know how it will turn out.
Sometimes it’s preparation you didn’t realize would become useful.
Sometimes it’s a community of people willing to lend you two clicks of their time.
And sometimes it’s being just delusional enough to look at an extraordinary opportunity and think:
Why not me?
I can’t tell you that I manifested a $75,000 wedding.
But I can tell you that when luck landed on my Instagram feed, I decided to meet it halfway.
And I’m so glad I did.
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Written by Dominique Moon
Host, artist, creative, and a firm believer that a little audacity can go a long way.