Lina Hidalgo, the Texas Democrat whose star has been rising steadily ever since she was elected Harris County judge in January 2019, is no stranger to times of stress. As a 33-year-old Stanford graduate born to Colombian parents and raised mostly in Houston who is now tasked with overseeing a multibillion-dollar county budget in the country’s second-most populous state, Hidalgo’s choice to be candid about her struggle with clinical depression—that ultimately led to her taking a temporary leave of absence last fall to receive outpatient mental health treatment—has set a new standard in politics for what it means to be publicly vulnerable.
As a female politician of color and child of immigrants who is seeing out her term under a second Trump administration that has kicked off with, among other things, openly hostile displays of power aimed at abortion rights activists, immigrants, and refugees, Hidalgo occupies a role within the Democratic Party that is particularly unique. And it’s only set to become more so as appointed Texas judges increasingly skew Republican—making Hidalgo’s openness about her experience feel all the more significant. Below, find Hidalgo’s account of getting engaged, planning a wedding, (spoiler alert!) getting married, and working to prioritize her mental health throughout it all.
I met my now-husband, David, in 2014 when I was volunteering for the Texas Civil Rights Project. I had just gotten back from working in Thailand at Internews Network, an international nonprofit dedicated to training journalists and advocating for press freedom, and then Michael Brown was killed, and I wanted to do more direct civil rights work. I googled “civil rights Texas,” and that’s what came up. I was then working as a medical interpreter but volunteering at the Texas Civil Rights Project, and David had just finished law school and started a one-year fellowship there as an attorney. He never asked me out: I was the one who asked him out. We would sit next to each other in the evening, work late, and I’d say: “I’m really hungry,” and finally we’d go out to eat. He’s an incredibly sweet person. I think that encapsulates it: He’s selfless and he’s very sweet.
After almost a decade of dating, we made plans to go to New Zealand in March 2023. I was doing my second Ironman there, so of course, that’s where David wanted to propose. But I couldn’t wait that long—I wanted my ring!—and I was driving my staff crazy every weekend thinking that this was going to be the weekend of the proposal. One such Saturday, I went to see a play with a friend of mine. I came home, David and I ran some errands, and then we went to the post office to pick up our packages. As we drove home from the post office, even I (with my famously bad sense of direction) could tell we were driving a different way. Then he stopped the car, and I looked outside and realized we were in front of the Texas Civil Rights Project. It was the building where we met, and I knew what must be happening, but it was still a surprise.
David reminded me that I had to get out of the car for him to actually, you know, do the thing, so we were in the middle of the street when he got down on one knee and opened the box. It was upside down, which was adorable and so us. David said some nice things I was too excited to remember, and I was finally able to update everyone I’d told that I was about to get engaged—which really was everybody and their mother.
What I didn’t always tell everyone was that David had used the bulk of his savings to pay off a massive bill I’d received for my mental health treatment, which had the unexpected result of making me less anxious about marriage—alongside everything else—and finally allowed me to accept David’s proposal. One of the key lessons I learned this year was being okay with contradictions and dichotomies. In treatment, I worked on accepting two conflicting feelings at once: like sadness, worry, or exhaustion over friends’ illnesses or natural disasters in Texas or various work challenges, and that they could exist alongside the growing closeness of my relationship with David, and the joy and excitement I felt around wedding planning and making it to the big day itself. (I continue to believe this mental health conversation is vital for everyone—people need to know what mental health challenges look like and how we can address them.)
It rained on my wedding day, which they say is good luck, but I’m not entirely sure—either way, we just played that Alanis Morissette song and moved on. David proved just how right he was for me not just once but consistently during the run-up to the wedding by making its various events amazingly positive. Instead of being detrimental to my mental health, as so many stereotypical wedding events frequently are, our wedding events only added to my joy. Mostly because of the people they brought together, from my mom’s longtime hairdresser and makeup artist—who changed my hairstyle three times over the course of the wedding day—to my best friend, who helped pay for my mental health treatment program and actually dropped me off there.
For the big day itself, I somehow ended up with two wedding dresses. The first was a drop-waist pink gown designed by Project Runway winner and Houstonite Chloe Dao (who designed my outfits for a 2022 state dinner at the White House and my DNC convention speech) that was inspired by my pink engagement ring and by a watercolor I had painted. The second was a more traditional—but still pink!—Romona Keveza gown, along with a beautiful veil we made.
The pink was meant to reference my pink sapphire engagement ring and honor my grandmother, who could not be at our wedding because she did not want to leave my ailing grandfather’s side—but who also got married in a color that was not white. I paired Prada shoes with both looks, and since we couldn’t bring our cat, Meiloorun, I wore an Olympia Le-Tan clutch that featured a tuxedo cat that looked just like her!
There were too many incredibly special moments of our wedding to relay, but the one I keep coming back to is the vows. We got married at the resort Amanpulo in the Philippines, which is the only property on Pamalican Island. We love snorkeling and scuba diving together, so much so that our engagement party cake was made in the shape of a sea turtle, and when we held hands for the ceremony on a ledge overlooking the ocean and took in our friends reading poems, I was able to really savor the moment and lean fully into my happiness.
Our wedding weekend was incredible, but so was the small “paper wedding” ceremony we planned in Houston to quietly celebrate signing the official documents that made our marriage legal. A judge friend fit us into his schedule on what turned out to be the Saturday after the 2024 presidential election—I wanted to change the date, but we weren’t able to. It was tiny, just us and some friends.
We didn’t want it to feel like a wedding, but we also worked really hard not to let the election results ruin the day. David had supported me from the very beginning when I decided to run for Harris County judge shortly after Donald Trump was elected the first time. And in the end, the various events that comprised my “wedding season” ended up boosting my spirits more than I could have predicted—especially during a time of political turbulence, when I and so many others desperately needed a lift.
My only regret? I wish I’d gotten a photo of that Philippines sunset—but the umbrellas in the wedding pictures look pretty amazing too.
