The Surprising Way <i>Gossip Girl</i> Influenced Leighton Meester and Adam Brody’s Wedding

Leighton Meester wore multiple wedding gowns during her time playing Blair Waldorf in Gossip Girl. That experience shaped how she handled her real-life wedding to Adam Brody in a surprising way, she revealed to Bustle.

She and Brody chose to have a small celebration because “on sets and in life, I’ve been able to wear a fancy dress and hit a mark and say lines, and I didn’t want [my wedding] to feel like that,” she said. “I wanted it to feel intimate and private.”

Leighton Meester in one of the wedding dresses she wore on Gossip Girl, while filming the show on Nov. 15, 2011.

Brody and Meester tied the knot in early 2014, just months after they revealed their engagement in November 2013. On Feb. 19, 2014, a source broke news of their wedding to E!, saying, “Leighton and Adam got married in Northern California by the ocean a couple of weeks ago. It was a very small and intimate wedding with close family and friends. It was beautiful.”

The couple hasn’t said much about the ceremony since, and photos never emerged of their private day.

Leighton Meester and Adam Brody at the 2025 Golden Globes.

Meester and Brody went on to welcome two children, who are now 9 and 4 years old. They are part of the reason why Meester is so selective about her projects now.

“There’s been a lot of stuff that I haven’t done because I want to be with them,” she explained. “I don’t like being away from them. I’m sure a lot of people feel this way, but I’m especially not into it. Obviously, for the very right thing, I would probably just be like, ‘Let’s figure it out.’ I mean, I’m not going to leave my family for a year. We’re not doing that. But apart from that, we have a good system in place, where I can consider jobs carefully. And every other piece of life.

“It’s been really, very lovely to do a couple of shows where there is that feeling of: there could be a future there,” she added. “But I don’t know. People are always asking, ‘What do you want to do? Where do you see yourself? Where do you want to go?’ And I’m like, I don't know. I don’t know if it’s motherhood or this current situation or this business. You kind of can’t be like, ‘I know what I’m doing three years from now.’ I’m just, like, OK right now, I just feel like being in the moment and figuring it out as I go along, because that’s all we can do, you know?”