Ray now lives and works between Los Angeles and New York City. She married actor Derek James Baynham on January 8, 2003. In 2007, the first season of the HGTV series Marriage Under Construction covered their purchase, renovation and eventual sale of a house in Toronto. The couple divorced in 2009. In March 2015, Vanessa announced on Instagram and Twitter that she was engaged to her boyfriend of six years, Landon Beard. On June 14, 2015, they married at the Condor’s Nest Ranch in eastern San Diego County, California.

Between 2013 and 2016, Ray appeared as CeCe Drake, a “beyond-charismatic twenty-something blonde stylist at a boutique that has one heel in the present, one in the past”, in the television series Pretty Little Liars. Ray was announced to start filming again for PLL, and spoke about returning, saying, “It’s so fun to do, and what a crazy character I get to play. She’s sort of a sociopath. I think she’s so weird because she’s, like, 22 but hangs out with high-schoolers. It’s like, ‘Hey, girl! Get a life!’”

In 2013, Ray joined the Season 4 cast of the CBS police procedural drama Blue Bloods as Officer Edit “Eddie” Janko, a role she has continued through the show’s 10th season.