The Modern Bride's New Wedding Must-Have? An Etsy Witch
Getty; Design by Leah Romero
I've bought spells from witches before. I won't tell this story as if I haven't, so let me get that out of the way. Purchased at my favorite witchy store in the East Village, my spells came in the form of little vials of colored oils and look like roll-on perfumes. One's for health, one's for clarity, and one's for heart healing. What? I grew up on
Sabrina the Teenage Witch
and
Practical Magic
. Plus, have you seen the world out there? Can you blame me for indulging in a little mysticism?
But even with tendencies such as mine, I had little idea about the online
to me
was the playful admission that she had hired an 'Etsy witch' to cast a spell for good weather on her wedding day, which did, in fact, come to fruition.
Jaz, I soon learned, is far from alone. You'd be surprised by
how many brides seek out magical intercession. And, it turns out,
In the comments section of Jaz's video, I found numerous users sharing their own testimonials for spells they bought online from other practitioners. 'Marysmagicshop literally work
[sic]
every time no joke,' wrote one user. 'YUHH MARY ON TOP,' replied another, one of many who seconded the recommendation.
Ally Dossick, a 33-year-old occupational therapist from Philadelphia, hired the same witch as Jaz for her own wedding just one week after the influencer's. After seeing the viral clips, Dossick placed the order for a custom spell requesting no rain in Allentown, New Jersey, on
Saturday, May 31. It cost her $12. 'Like, why not?' she
tells me. 'It worked for [Jaz]. It can't hurt, especially when it's not expensive.' In response, she got a message saying, 'I've successfully completed your order. Please allow 3-4 weeks for the full manifestation.' With a purple crystal ball emoji, naturally. Dossick could only allow two days for full manifestation, but the spell still worked—mostly. That Saturday, it rained a bit, but only at 'good times' like during the ceremony, which was planned for indoors. It cleared up in time for the wedding party to take photos outside. All things considered, she was pleased. When I asked what her friends and family thought about the spell, she tells me
that they were just confused. 'They were like, 'What's an Etsy witch?'' Fair enough.
Getty + Design by Leah Romero
On the very same day, 199 miles away in New Lebanon, New York, Caroline Mullen, a 30-year-old writer based in Jersey City, also got married, except the spell she bought from a different Etsy witch didn't work. (Jaz's witch became so inundated in the aftermath that she removed all her listings.) 'It was really bad,' Mullen says. 'It was torrentially downpouring. Parts of the venue were flooding. The power went out the night before, and they had to turn on the generator.' To her credit, the newlywed isn't mad about the $15 spent on the spell. 'It was a shot in the dark. I just appreciate her energy towards it. Not everything works.'
And anyway, it might not have been the hired witch's doing. 'My mother-in-law had her church friends praying for good weather, and I kept joking that them and the Etsy witch were counteracting each other and creating a cyclone. I think next time I'll pick one or the other.'
Unlike Dossick, Mullen had the idea long before Jaz posted. 'A friend of a friend had used an Etsy witch for a revenge spell a couple months ago, and [my friend group] thought it was the most amazing thing in the world,' she explains. 'So, I had been waiting for a reason to use one, and this was the perfect time.'
'That's how we manifest: belief. If you focus on something, you put energy into it—it's physics—you're going to change its vibration.'
When I ask about what happened with the friend who bought the revenge spell, Mullen says she isn't sure how the story ended. Such ambivalence is a theme here; results are almost irrelevant. The wish will or won't come true, but it's more about the effort, the intention. A handing over of worry and concern, an acknowledgment that something is out your control. That alone, it seems, can be magic.
According to
'Say I find someone on the internet who guarantees that for $5 she's going to make some horrible things happen,' Dabrowski poses. 'Do I think it's a real spell? No. But do I think there's some energy that releases from that? I do.' Sometimes, a little directed energy is all it takes.
I found
'We usually advise [non-believers] to not get spells, because that kind of negative mindset, that lack of belief, is usually quite detrimental.'
While she does work with brides, it's usually for trouble-shooting. To help ease tension between feuding in-laws, she might provide a special sourdough loaf
to be shared. Or, for a bride who's worried about fidelity, Dabrowski might make a gris to be sewn into the wedding gown.
And, by all standards, business is booming. She says she had to leave her job as a Medicaid fraud investigator just one year after launching her Etsy storefront back in 2020. Now, she's in such high demand that she's recruited her two daughters (seventh generation, no biggie) and two other practitioners to assist.
Getty + Design by Leah Romero
Searches for 'spell casters' are even up 85 percent compared to this time last year, according to my sources at Yelp. Theia, one of the witches at
These Etsy storefronts also aren't just for those looking to summon a sunny day or a dose of revenge, or make a quick buck. At my local mystical shop, the in-house witches tell me that, in fact, it's a useful platform for sourcing rare or exotic herbs, tonics, crystals, or otherwise necessary ingredients.
When I started working on this story, I wasn't sure where it would lead. What conclusion would I come to? Are these customers being fooled, or did I just learn about the best life hack of all time? The truth is somewhere in between, I think. Actually, I'm glad some mystery remains. 'Belief is very important,' Theia says, noting that magic is best served to those who trust it. If someone is skeptical or suspicious, they might not be a good candidate. 'We usually advise those people to not get spells, because that kind of negative mindset, that lack of belief, is usually quite detrimental.' So, I think I'll choose to believe. On Sunday, I'll be celebrating my best friend's birthday with a picnic at her favorite park. And if the sun is shining, it'll be the best $12 I've ever spent.
Associate Fashion Commerce Editor
Cosmopolitan, Town & Country,
Harper's Bazaar
, and
Good Housekeeping
, among many other outlets. Her personal passions include travel, buffalo sauce, and gardening. You can find her in New York, where she lives, or on
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Drive
9 hours ago
- The Drive
The F1 Movie Threatens to Change the Very Sport It Highlights
The latest car news, reviews, and features. Despite Sunday's Austrian Formula 1 Grand Prix serving up a cinematic start setback against the Red Bull Ring's scenic circuit, Brad Pitt's 'F1: The Movie' debut overshadowed the very sport it aims to boost. For the past two years, Apple TV's goal of creating a realistic racing movie has blurred the lines between fact and fiction in F1. The film follows APX GP, a struggling F1 team that recruits retired driver Sonny Hayes (Pitt) as the singular solution to all the black and gold team's flaws. Unlike the slew of racing films preceding it, 'F1' aimed to slip into the sport's paddock, set up shop, and film as if the Hollywood crew were just another team. To do so, the minds behind 'Top Gun,' working with producers Lewis Hamilton and Toto Wolff, made Pitt and his co-star Damson Idris (playing the hot-shot young teammate Joshua Pearce) regulars on the F1 calendar. But rather than seamlessly fit into the sport, the entertainment venture seemed to turn the race track into a movie set: filming fake podiums and media pen interviews with the sport's 20 drivers as background actors in their own day jobs, handing out APX GP merch to fans in the grandstands and weaving F1 regulars like Will Buxton, David Croft, and Martin Brundle into the plot. Getty Dimitrios Kambouris For existing F1 fans, the highly contentious and highly anticipated blockbuster acted as a love letter to the sport, littered with cheeky inside jokes, cameos, and interactive fan experiences at best. At worst, it was a house guest that overstayed its welcome and redecorated. The film's best asset was its racing. The opening 24 Hours of Daytona racing scene is so objectively good that the on-track F1 scenes throughout don't hold a flame to the opening sports car racing. But for non-fans, the racing scenes were almost too good. A transfer from director Joseph Kosinski's camera angles to F1TV's might prove lackluster. If the film was going for realism, it should have gone full throttle. As F1 drivers appeared on screen and the techy behind-the-scenes content lifted the curtain on off-track aspects most fans never see, like team hospitality suites, driver rooms, and air tunnels, the handful of things that were written in—like Pitt's character failing to be penalized for cheating—were glaringly obvious to hardcore fans. At times, it was even more obvious that Hamilton had a role in bringing the film to life with several scenes and plot lines seemingly straight out of his racing career. Above all, the film failed to latch onto one storyline and successfully build out characters, relying so heavily on Pitt's over-the-top bad-boy charm that it came off too strong, leaving a bad taste in viewers' mouths. And if charismatic Hayes was the hero, there was no single villain. It could have been the rival teams (or Hamilton himself, as the film hints at), the villainized media, the sport's ruling body, or the veteran racer's own physical limitations. The scenes of Hayes strategically and purposefully crashing himself and other drivers out of the race to bring out safety car after safety car provided an interesting way of circumventing the rules, and at times acted as comedic relief. But other than an unrealistic lack of penalties, it didn't show Haye's racing genius as it intended and instead undercut the magic of the sport. F1's most thrilling element lies in the seconds separating rivals and the nuances integral to the sport: racing in the gray areas and strategizing within the current rulebook. 'F1' failed to capture that complexity fully. On top of it all, creating a car for 'combat' without any regard for safety felt like a step back in the series' efforts to make a historically fatal sport safer. The biggest backlash the movie garnered stemmed from its romance subplot. On the surface and from an F1 outsider perspective, the love story between Pitt's character and the fictional team's lead designer was a perfectly fine plot point. But in the context of the obstacles and stereotypes women in motorsport have historically faced while breaking into the industry, along with this season marking the first time a female race engineer is on the grid, the storyline felt unnecessary and even offensive. Getty But for all the plot holes and AI-adjacent-sounding script writing, the film managed to achieve what the sport's executives have failed to: produce a show that unites new and traditional fans alike. For movie theatergoers unfamiliar with the sport, the film is projected to create a second surge in F1 popularity in the United States. 'F1' already broke the production studio's box office record, bringing in $144 million during its worldwide debut. The globe-trotting European sport infected the masses with Formula Fever in 2019 following the release of Netflix's 'Drive to Survive.' With the docuseries now on its seventh season and not yet renewed for an eighth, Hollywood came at the perfect time. The sport's popularity surge at the turn of the decade hasn't been exactly steady, with spectatorship and public opinion swiftly falling in the midst of Max Verstappen's winning streak. And while the sport now boasts 750 million global fans and amassed a record 3.1 million ESPN viewers during the 2024 Miami GP, only 2.2 million people bothered to tune into the South Florida race this year. The sport could use a blood transfusion in the form of Hollywood's lights, cameras, and action, providing a potential pipeline from AMC A-Lister to Grand Prix attendee. While the U.S. launch date may have been oddly timed, falling on the same race weekend as the Austrian Grand Prix, by sheer luck the race on Sunday provided converted viewers with something to latch onto: a teammate title on-track tussle paired with a feisty radio message from championship leader Oscar Piastri, underdog rookies scoring points, an opening-lap crash between rookie Kimi Antonelli and Red Bull's Verstappen, and a handful of DNFs. Getty But with the potential for a second wave, there's the question of where the sport goes from here. The sport could be a new fad, creating a 'Hot F1 Summer' as some are already touting. It's true that the advertising around the film—from McDonald's Happy Meals and Heineken commercials to the music industry's 'It Girls' completing the soundtrack to a PR run that only F1 money and influence can buy: New Yorker Cartoons, Cosmo features and partnering with the sport's ever-growing cast of influencers—is creating a sense that everyone is talking about the sport. But buying a movie ticket isn't a commitment to tune in come race day. Plus, while the film may convert a new generation of newbie race fans, it also threatens to create confusion. (The New York Times ' review of the film clarified to readers what and who was fictional versus real.) After becoming an omnipresent part of the sport, 'F1' risks becoming attached to its future. Everyone loves an underdog story, and 'F1' did deliver a good one with speed shown at a rate that was equally dizzying and addictive. The sport had a similar underdog story in the States back in 2019. But F1 isn't the same sport it was six years ago. Got a tip? Email us at tips@
Black America Web
21 hours ago
- Black America Web
Cassius Gems: Nicole Scherzinger's Most Sultry Instagram Moments
Source: TheStewartofNY / Getty Nicole Scherzinger celebrates her 47th birthday today, and given her longevity in the entertainment industry, she's got a lot to celebrate. The Honolulu, Hawaii native got her start as the frontwoman for The Pussycat Dolls in the early 2000s, which had hits like 'Don't Cha' and 'Stickwitu,' and was so popular that its 55 million record-selling run helped them become one of the world's best-selling female groups of all time. Even after all the success—which includes a Grammy nomination—the group disbanded in 2010. Scherzinger avoided the fall by offering her talents to the next crop of aspiring singers, becoming a judge on several shows, including The Sing-Off , The X Factor , two runs on The X Factor UK, Australia's Got Talent , and most recently, a gig on The Masked Singer, which ended in 2023. In the midst of that, she also won the tenth season of Dancing With The Stars . Lately, she's leaned into her onstage roots, and after initial stints in the plays Rent and Cats , she found herself making her Broadway debut in 2024 as the lead character in the musical Sunset Blvd . 'I've always dreamed of this. I'm so fulfilled now to be able to finally share all of my gifts and all of my abilities with the world and connect with people through my performance on a much deeper, soulful, spiritual level,' she told CBS Mornings . But in light of her newfound pivot, in a recent interview with Vogue , she spoke about her early days in The Pussycat Dolls and how it changed her perception of sex appeal. 'I think the initial idea of the Dolls was to be sexy for others, where I think for the women of today, their sex appeal is for themselves,' she says. 'Real strength is loving yourself, embracing yourself.' Now on her own terms, Scherzinger's got no problem showing off in thirst traps. See some of her hottest Instagram moments below Cassius Gems: Nicole Scherzinger's Most Sultry Instagram Moments was originally published on
Black America Web
21 hours ago
- Black America Web
Drake's New Shirtless Selfie Leads To More BBL Jokes and Tummy Tuck Allegations
Source: Cole Burston / Getty The rap beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar has had two very different effects on their immediate career trajectories. Kendrick dropped a new album in GNX , performed at the Super Bowl, and won five Grammys. But Drake just can't seem to shake an onslaught of criticism that only heightens with each social media post. His latest perceived misstep is a shirtless selfie he posted to Instagram showing off his abs in the mirror. The impromptu selfie covers his face and appears to have been taken near his bar, as a bunch of bottles of whiskey and tequila are shown on his shelves. Other photos in the carousel show him embracing the Texas lifestyle, like jogging on his property, a pair of sneaker-infused cowboy boots, and a rainy shot of his four-wheeler. In his usual move, the caption is some throwaway lyrics, which read, ' I'm wide awake for the nights that separate the type who get to it til they get it right from the type who just …type.' Drake showing off his gym gains is something he's done before, but since the beef reignited, unfounded allegations that he underwent liposuction or a tummy tuck are back making the rounds. Social media comments were hardly in his favor, with one writing, 'The untoned arms, but the super defined abs, Drake. I know what you are.' 'Drake fake abs look like the precut cookie dough squares omg,' another chimed in. Another claimed he could have just locked in for real results, adding, 'Access to the best trainers and healthiest food in the world, but chose to go to a plastic surgeon for fake abs. What a b-tch.' Kendrick even alluded to it on 'Euphoria' when he rapped , 'Let your core audience stomach that, Then tell'em where you get your abs from.' That even launched its side quest during the beef when MetroBoomin released the soulfully sampled 'BBL Drizzy' beat that Rick Ross instigated and created a $10,000 prize for whoever dropped the best freestyle over the beat. In an attempt to switch the narrative, Drake stole the beat for Sexy Redd's 'U My Everything,' reclaiming the nickname because he pays for so many BBL surgeries. Still, the jokes wear on. See how social media is reacting to Drake's latest Instagram post below. Drake's New Shirtless Selfie Leads To More BBL Jokes and Tummy Tuck Allegations was originally published on
