Inside Lainey Wilson’s Oscar de la Renta Wedding Day
I came to Lainey Wilson the way a lot of women did this season, by way of her Netflix documentary, and walked away thinking she was somebody I would have wanted to sit next to in church. There is a softness underneath the bell bottoms and the bravado, a grown woman who has been through enough to know what a steady kind of love feels like when it finally walks through the door. So when Vogue Weddings shared the news on Thursday that she and former NFL quarterback Devlin “Duck” Hodges had quietly said “I do” the Sunday before, the warmth came in like a phone call from a friend with good news. She married him at the Ruskin Cave in Dickson, Tennessee on May 10, and the photos by Corbin Gurkin alone are reason enough to bookmark the slideshow.
The adorable couple exchanged their vows on a cobblestone ledge at the base of a waterfall in front of family and friends, with the spring breeze in the air and water trickling somewhere just out of frame. Wes Williams, her mentor, officiated. Lainey arrived wearing a breathtaking Oscar de la Rena gown in a white horse-drawn carriage, and Duck waited for her in a bespoke suit by D. Lacquaniti, finished with a Charlie 1 Horse cowboy hat that he absolutely earned the right to wear.
The woman who built her entire visual identity on bell bottoms and a low-slung hat set all of that aside for her wedding and stepped into a custom Oscar de la Renta gown with over 1500 Japanese cherry blossoms and over 20,000 bugle beads and crystal embellishments. What’s a wedding dress without a dramatic train? Lainey’s detachable train details included hand-sewn floral details that were also duplicated in her gorgeous veil. “The cherry blossom represents living in the moment, and that’s exactly what we did,” Lainey shared with the outlet.
So much of the world tells women that the day is about being looked at. The truth I have learned, the older I get, is that the day is about being seen, and there is an enormous difference between the two. Lainey Wilson was seen on May 10. She was seen by the people who raised her, and she was seen by the man who has been waiting on her since 2021, the man who has shared publicly that he loves the woman more than he loves the persona. The Oscar de la Renta gown, for all of its couture-house pedigree, served the truth of who she is. That, to me, is the highest compliment a dress can pay a bride.
I will be thinking about that cherry blossom neckline for a long time. There is a quiet sermon in it for the rest of us about choosing the bloom of right-now over the noise of next, and about marrying the kind of man who loves the woman more than he loves the headline. Congratulations to the new Mr. and Mrs. Hodges. May this marriage be tended like a garden, and may the Lord keep the both of you for many slow Sunday mornings to come.
