Actress Debby Ryan and Twenty One Pilots’ Joshua Dun Planned Their Whirlwind Austin Wedding in Just 28 Days
While we’re all currently social-distancing and committed to mask wearing, this wedding took place in the months before the coronavirus pandemic began. We hope it will bring some joy to your reading list.
Actress Debby Ryan and Twenty One Pilots’ drummer Joshua Dun were engaged for a year before they planned their New Year’s Eve wedding in just 28 days. “We began to flirt with the idea of having a destination party celebrating the new decade, then decided in December to get married [in Austin] on New Year’s Eve, and just keep dancing until after the ball dropped,” Debby explains. It all happened quickly and clandestinely, but when Twenty One Pilots dropped a new, surprise music video called “Level of Concern” in April, fans began to suspect the two had officially tied the knot, as Joshua is wearing a ring throughout the homemade portions of the clip.
“The time just felt right,” Debby says. A close friend had passed away the previous summer, which changed her outlook. “He was excited that Joshua and I were getting married, and I never doubted that I’d know him through every coming phase of our lives,” Debby explains. “When he passed, it really rocked me and put a lot of things in perspective. It didn’t feel important to wait anymore, to stop being busy, or for things to line up perfectly—intending to do things is not nearly as powerful as doing, as we aren’t promised tomorrow.”
The path to the wedding started at the end of 2018, when Twenty One Pilots was set to tour in Australia and New Zealand. “Before leaving for that tour, I knew I wanted to propose in New Zealand,” Joshua remembers. He designed the ring with a friend, but it wasn’t ready before his takeoff time. “A couple of days before we got to New Zealand, my friend Alex called and said it was good to go. At the last second, we decided it wouldn’t be a smart move to ship the ring as it may not clear customs. Alex volunteered to fly from Columbus to meet Debby’s brother on his layover in Los Angeles. He delivered the ring and turned around and flew right back to Columbus. Chase and his wife then flew with the ring from L.A. to Auckland, landed, and got to the hotel five minutes before our date was set to start.”
That morning, Joshua had called an event space and asked if it was possible to use the treehouse on the property for a proposal. Joshua immediately dispatched a videographer and photographer to hide and take shots and footage of the proposal. “It ended up perfect,” he remembers. “So many things had to fall perfectly into place, and they all did at the very last second. I couldn’t have imagined the proposal working out any better.”
“It was wild and perfect,” Debby adds. “I’m pretty nosy, but didn’t suspect a thing.”
Debby and Joshua then set out to find a wedding venue. “We didn’t want the ceremony to be in a ballroom,” Debby explains. “It became more and more important to us that the sanctity of the union exist in a reverent place. I think I saw every church in the greater Austin area and narrowed it down to two. Joshua chose the one we went with. The stained glass windows really got me.”
The design brief included a nod to Debby’s love for mixing high and low style, and Joshua’s penchant for splashy neon lighting—but streamlined. “We wanted it to feel like game night at our place had [turned into] a Gatsby-level dance party,” Debby says. “I searched Google for art deco treehouse and goth flowers and made a couple of mood boards for tone reference ahead of seeing venues.”
The couple worked with Alex Moreau of XO Moreau. “I’d met and had conversations for almost a year with a handful of the chicest recommended planners and teams from all over,” Debby recalls. “They all seemed capable of throwing a beautiful wedding, but no one else put me into action like Alex.”
Debby first came across Alex’s work when she saw it in a magazine while visiting family in Texas. “I knew I wanted someone familiar with Austin and the most elevated vendors there, but without that trendy treatment that a lot of planners run their events through,” Debby says. She quickly reached out to Alex via Instagram DM about throwing a three-day party on New Year’s and appreciated her confident yet conversational responses. They first met on December 2. “We had a long coffee meeting, and by the end of the night, we decided we could pull it off and set everything into motion. I had a lot of ideas and Alex helped me navigate how to best use those 28 days—how big I could dream, how unconventional to skew—and was a touchstone of how realistic to stay.”
They chose Hotel Van Zandt as their home base for the wedding weekend. “We wanted our guests to be able to change for dancing, take a disco nap, and come and go at their leisure,” Debby explains. “It honestly felt like we took over the hotel. The style was right: The chairs in the ballroom looked like some I wanted to rent. The whole floor had space for lounging, a couple of bars, a photo booth, plus the event space was three ballrooms with floating walls. This allowed us to put the dance floor in the middle space, opening up to one side for the dinner reception, toasts, and first dances.”
“Because the wedding was coming together very quickly, so was finding the suit,” Joshua explains. From the start, he knew he wanted an emerald velvet look. “I called my good friend Alex, who I also designed the engagement ring with, and told him what I was looking for,” Joshua says. “An hour later, he called me back and said he was having a Paul Smith suit shipped. I tried it on and immediately knew it was the one.” He wore the green velvet suit with black Nike Cortez shoes.
Meanwhile, Debby only had eyes for an Elie Saab dress. “The day the collection dropped on Vogue, I saved it,” Debby says. “For a long time, it was the only image of a wedding dress I had saved anywhere, and the only image in a folder titled ‘wedding’ on my phone.”
