Bride-to-Be, Still Grieving the Death of Her Father, Goes on Solo 3-Day 'Me-Chelorette' Party (Exclusive)

Zoë Weiner says she needed some time to “reflect on who I am and who I want to be”

• Zoë Weiner found herself grappling with thorny emotions while in the middle of planning her upcoming wedding and still dealing with her grief

• “It’s kind of silly things, like picking out flowers, but they become so overwhelming,” she says of the pressure she was feeling

• A three-day excursion to an Arizona resort, complete with zip-lining, working with horses and an encounter with a medium, helped her reset

Depressed and anxious, Zoë Weiner felt overwhelmed by planning her upcoming wedding, with emotions riding high as she also grieved her late father who would not be there for one of the biggest days of her life.

So Weiner agreed to what she calls a "me-chelorette" party, embarking on a three-day solo trip to Arizona's Miraval Resort to manage her stress — and develop some life tools along the way.

“I invented the word and my friends were like, 'That’s not a thing,' ” Weiner, laughing, tells PEOPLE of her unusual adventure. “Well, maybe it will be. But it is hard to say out loud.”

Weiner, 33, got engaged in October 2023 to Jordan Zelin and left her job in media to start the not-for-profit Beautyfor and plan their Jan. 11, 2025, nuptials.

“It’s been tough to balance. She spent 10 years grinding at another job and was looking to make a change, then it happened at the same time as the wedding planning,” Zelin, 32, says. “There were a lot of big life decisions going on all at the same time.”

Weiner says that as she got deeper into the wedding planning process, she was having trouble coping. Instead of being in the happiest chapter of her life, she found herself in a serious mental struggle.

She and fiancé Zelin, who met on Hinge in 2020, live and work in a 500-square-foot studio apartment in New York’s Greenwich Village with their toy poodle. Weiner says she just needed to get away from everything.

“It’s kind of silly things, like picking out flowers, but they become so overwhelming,” she says of the pressure she was feeling. “But I’m also making a major step in my life and need a minute to reflect on who I am and who I want to be.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. 

The next thing she knew, she was booking a trip to Arizona where — as part of her "me-chelorette" — she challenged her fears with a shaky trip up to a zip-line tower, faced her need to be perfect by baring her soul to a horse and connected to a medium who brought her some peace with the passing of her father, Mark.

“I lost my dad in 2016 and our last conversation was about [my future] wedding. He had terminal cancer and we thought he had more time,” Weiner says. “He was telling me he wasn't going to be able to make it to my wedding. And that was the last time we ever spoke.”

There were a lot of spiritual practices at the resort, which she says was part of her healing journey that she had not explored before — like getting into a ring with a horse and being told to lead the animal (weighing more than 1,000 pounds) in a circle using her body language.

“The trainer made it look so easy, but it was not,” Weiner says. “The horse could tell I was super anxious because I wanted to do a perfect job.”

The trainer also told her the horse wasn’t judging her level of perfection, and Weiner realized she didn’t have to be perfect in order to communicate what she wanted.

“It stripped me down so much,” she says. “It’s really been the baseline for the work I’ve done on myself and heading into our marriage.”

Spending time with a medium was another new experience.

While Weiner says her mom has “done enough for both of them,” she still felt not having her dad as part of her special day added an extra emotional charge.

“My mom and my in-laws really stepped in to support, but there was a lot of grief I didn’t deal with,” she says. “So having an intuitive medium to help guide me through that was, honestly, a privilege.”

She recalls how she was sitting on the floor of a yurt, crystals in each hand and finishing a meditative sound bath, in which she was “bathed” in sound waves.

Afterward, the medium, Rae Jessie Gordon, started receiving messages for those in the room.

Weiner says she got messages from her dad through Gordon, telling her that he was going to walk her down the aisle to Frank Sinatra’s "Fly Me to the Moon."

“That was a song we listened to 10,000 times together on the way to school growing up, which was almost too wild to be a coincidence,” Weiner says. “Who knows if it was real or not? I’d like to believe it was. It was so healing to know he was going to be there with me.”

When she returned home to N.Y.C. after her foray, she felt like she had been rejuvenated, she says. Most of all, she was ready to jump back into the wedding planning where “you are navigating family dynamics, budgets, trying to make sure everyone is happy.”

“It’s worth it being with my people to enjoy the celebrations and the love,” she says.

Although Zelin was a little apprehensive about the spiritual aspects of the resort, he says he sees a positive change in Weiner. And, he thinks, he might need a little post-wedding getaway.

Weiner says she has the perfect word for it: “He can go on a 'me-moon.' ”