A Rainy Day Villa Antonia Wedding: Kelsey and Eric

Kelsey is an engineer. Eric is an air traffic controller. They met on Hinge, and Eric took her out for Tex-Mex and margaritas on a first date he showed up to with one eyebrow. Some couples you have to coax a story out of; this one arrived with it.

He proposed on the San Antonio River Walk over a Fourth of July weekend, with her college friends hiding nearby to celebrate after. The ring holds her grandmother's diamond, and beneath it sits a small emerald, his birthstone, so in the right light a flash of green comes up through the stone.

When Kelsey described the wedding she wanted, she said Villa Antonia "feels like Italy in Texas." She had dreamed of the Italian Riviera as a girl; the hilltop villa above Austin was the Texas answer, an hour's flight from their home in Dallas and a world away. They planned a garden party in blues and whites with gold running through it. What they could not plan was the weather, and this is the story of a wedding day the rain tried to claim and lost.

Getting Ready in the Villa

The morning stayed inside the villa's plaster walls and iron staircases while the sky made up its mind. Kelsey's gown from Lulu's Bridal in Dallas is sculpted lace from bodice to hem, worn with a lace-edged cathedral veil, a jeweled headband, and white platform heels she could actually dance in.

Her mother, in pink florals, and her bridesmaid in blue set the veil together, and the three of them photographed like the morning felt, easy and close. Eric dressed in charcoal with a navy striped tie and a silver tie bar, his groomsmen around him in light grey.

Blue and White, with the Hill Country Behind It

The design brief was the garden party Kelsey had imagined, and BZ Florals delivered it in blue and white: a gold hoop arch at the terrace edge dressed asymmetrically in hydrangea, delphinium, and garden roses, pillar arrangements beside it, and the courtyard fountain banked entirely in blooms.

Down the terrace, planner Adrianna Galindo of Redbook Events had the long feasting tables styled in navy linen with white runners, gold compote centerpieces, and place cards in acrylic, wooden cross-back chairs under string lights, with the Hill Country falling away past the railing.

Then It Rained. They Married Anyway.

The rain arrived with the ceremony, and nobody blinked. Clear umbrellas went up over the guests in their cross-back chairs, Kelsey came down the aisle to Eric at the flower-wrapped arch, and their officiant, who spent the ceremony somewhere between laughing and wiping his eyes, married them over the sound of it.

Here is what the photographs remember about the rain: nothing was ruined. The umbrellas read like part of the design, the wet stone went reflective, and every face in the frames is lit up. When they kissed, the terrace cheered from under a canopy of clear domes.

The Storm-Sky Portraits

This is the part rain gives you that sun never will. Between showers we took Kelsey and Eric back to the arch under a storm sky the color of slate, her veil spread across the wet stone, and then down into the villa's garden ruins, candlelit stairs and ivy and an iron gazebo, while the light went blue.

Dinner in the Villa

With the rain settled in for the evening, dinner filled the villa's dining room, the same navy, white, and gold carried inside under chandeliers, with Austin Catering serving and DJ Blake of Premier Entertainment running the room. Kelsey danced with her father, and the dance floor did not empty after that.

Rain, Fireworks, and a Tunnel of Sparks

And then the rain, which had spent the whole day being managed, became the whole point. We took the two of them out onto the empty terrace at night and lit the downpour from behind, so it fell around their kiss like sparks.

Fireworks went up over the wet terrace while they danced on it, red bursts doubled in the reflections at their feet. And when it was time to leave, they went out through a tunnel of cold-spark fountains, stopping in the middle for one last dip. The forecast everyone fears gave them the three most cinematic frames of the year.

The Vendor Team

A rainy wedding day only looks this effortless when the team around it is good. Venue: Villa Antonia, Austin. Planning: Adrianna Galindo, Redbook Events. Florals: BZ Florals. Catering: Austin Catering. Entertainment: DJ Blake, Premier Entertainment. Gown: Lulu's Bridal, Dallas. Photography: Michael Anthony Photography.

A Dallas Couple, Married in the Hill Country

Kelsey and Eric live in Dallas and chose Austin for the villa on the hill, which made this a destination wedding an afternoon's drive from home. We photograph weddings across Texas from our McKinney studio with no travel fee anywhere in the state, Dallas-Fort Worth to the Hill Country.

See more Dallas-Fort Worth wedding photography, read how the investment works, or contact us to talk through your date, rain plan included.