Millennial couple first to say ‘I do’ at RodeoHouston
Early Saturday morning last weekend, Chris Hadley pulled up to a locked gate outside NRG Park. Eight boxes of wedding decorations crowded the backseat and bed of his pickup. The clock on his dashboard read 6 a.m., some two hours before the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo officially opened for the day.
All Hadley knew was that he was looking for a guy named Keith.
Hadley was told Keith could help him unload the banners, signs and tabletop décor into the Champion Wine Garden before rodeo security caught on.
They weren’t breaking the rules. Not exactly. There was no protocol for getting married at the rodeo.
But by the end of March 7 — four days before the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo was canceled — Hadley and his fiancée, Baochau Ton, became the first couple to get hitched on rodeo grounds.
The couple met online two years ago. Hadley, 34, is chief of the organized crime division of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office;
Ton, 25, is a banker with JPMorgan Chase.
“I actually canceled on our first date,” Ton said. “He later got back in touch, and I thought, ‘Let’s give this guy a shot.’ ”
One of their first dates was Ton’s first visit to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.
“There was something about him from the get-go. He wasn’t like anyone else I had met at that point,” Ton said. “He wasn’t what I expected but everything I wanted. A carbon copy of my dream man.”
However smitten, she played it cool. “Of course, I didn’t want to tell him that and scare him off.”
When the couple moved in together just shy of the 12month mark, Ton’s parents were nervous. But she was certain he was the one.
On the first anniversary of their first date, Hadley proposed at their Oak Forest home.
“Originally, we were just going to elope to Ireland, but that went out the window pretty quickly after we told Baochau’s sister our plan,” Hadley said.
As a teenager, Ton had seen the movie “Leap Year,” a romantic comedy starring Amy Adams, and decided that getting married on the cliffs of Ireland would be romantic, dreamlike and different from what everyone would expect.
Her parents begged the bride to reconsider. “Their idea is that I’d want immediate family around to witness our vows and share that moment with us.”
So Ton re-evaluated.
“My mother’s pretty ill; she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer years ago, so the fact that she’s made it this far is a miracle,” she said. “That’s why it meant so much to have her there. It’s a lifelong memory now, that we were able to cherish that moment with our families.”
Because Hadley hails from Dayton, Ohio, and Ton is originally from Dallas, the groom wanted the most Houston wedding imaginable. That meant taking everyone to the rodeo.
He pitched a wild comprise.
“We went on our honeymoon first to take our wedding pictures,” Hadley said. “It was very unorthodox.”
That’s how he, his bride and their wedding photographer, Allison Bolin, wound up climbing the Cliffs of Moher, on Ireland’s southwestern edge, during the last week of February — in the middle of a storm.
Ton wore hiking boots under her A-line wedding gown to brave the 60 mph winds and 30-degree wind chill.
Halfway up the trail, a guide stopped to whisk the bride and photographer up in a golf cart.
“Apparently in Ireland, the groom has to walk,” Hadley said.
Hail and sleet aside, Ton wouldn’t change a thing. “Somehow we managed to still get a few cool photos.”
Their Houston nuptials fared better.
On Saturday, the couple began their wedding-day festivities with a handfasting ceremony at Étoile Cuisine et Bar in Uptown Park. The bride and groom’s parents met for the first time, and their immediate families witnessed Ton and Hadley bind their hands in ribbon to “tie the knot” in the Irish folk custom.
Meanwhile, on the rodeo grounds, 75 of the couple’s closest family and friends busily decorated a tent in the wine garden.
Yoakum Packing Co., a longtime rodeo vendor, wheeled over brisket and corn dogs for the wedding dinner.
By the time the newlyweds arrived for their reception, everything had fallen into place. Even the bride’s favorite cake decorator, Cakes by Tina, breezed through the ticket line, thanks to RodoeHouston volunteers.
“We don’t even know his last name, but this guy, Mark, waved us through the goldbadge line,” Ton says. “That small thing meant so much to me.”
“When our guests showed up in their cocktail dresses and formal attire, all of the HPD guys helped them jump the crowd. Everyone got a kick out of that,” Hadley said.
The groom’s favorite moment was having his friend, Judge Josh Hill of Harris County’s 232nd Criminal Court, sign the couple’s marriage certificate in the wine garden.
The bride was moved to tears inside NRG Center when a livestock exhibitor let her pose with a prized goat.
“I told our caterer we’re coming back every year to get a corn dog from them,” Ton said. “An anniversary corn dog.”
“I actually canceled on our first date,” Ton said. “He later got back in touch, and I thought, ‘Let’s give this guy a shot.’ ”