Vanessa Hudgens Wore Vera Wang to Marry Cole Tucker in the Heart of the Mayan Jungle
This past weekend, Vanessa Hudgens married professional baseball player Cole Tucker in Tulum, Mexico. The actress and entrepreneur met the shortstop and outfielder over a Zoom meditation led by Jay Shetty, a former monk turned British author and lifestyle guru, back in October 2020. “I was literally on the Zoom with my girlfriend, and I started hitting her asking who he was, and she had never seen him before,” Vanessa recalls. “So I proceeded to look on the Zoom square to find out his name and found him on Instagram—and he sent a DM the next day.”
After dating for three years, they got engaged by the Eiffel Tower in Paris in February 2023. “It’s the most romantic city in the world,” Vanessa says. “[But,] I was very surprised. I dropped a hint that that would be the ideal place, but kind of forgot about it because I didn’t want to have any expectations on the trip. I just wanted to enjoy it for what it was, and he caught me completely off guard.”
Cole proposed with an oval-shaped diamond on a thin gold band. “I definitely dropped hints about my ring,” Vanessa explains. “I was like, ‘I want a gold band with an oval diamond.’ Everyone who knows me knew what I wanted. So I told him that, and he took it a step further and made it even more beautiful than I thought.”
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Once engaged, they set a date of December 2, 2023, for their wedding and landed on the Azulik City of Arts in Tulum, Mexico for the location. “The planning process was definitely overwhelming,” Vanessa admits. “I knew I’d never been to a wedding that I’ve wanted my own wedding to be like, so I had to think out of the box. Finding a venue was the hardest part. I knew I didn’t want to do it at a beach, at a ballroom, or at a barn—these were all things I didn’t want. Instead, I wanted to be surrounded by nature, greenery, and foliage.”
Vanessa had actually followed the Azulik Hotel on Instagram for a long time. “One of my really good friends had just finished a show on Broadway, and he was asking me where he should go for a little vacation, and I was scrolling through Instagram right before he called, and I was like ‘Oh go to Azulik—this place is so freakin’ beautiful,” she says. “I told Cole, ‘Maybe we could go here on our honeymoon…we would get such great pictures. Wait—maybe we could get married here?!’”
The actress was working nonstop on the latest film in the Bad Boys franchise at the time, but needed to fly to Tulum for a venue tour. “I was like you know what, even if it’s not that hotel, I’m sure I’ll find another hotel that might work,” she says. “I also knew I wanted to get married somewhere warm, and our window for getting married was so small because Cole’s [baseball] season is very long. I felt like ‘Mexico it is!’ I also wanted somewhere very spiritual. So I went to the hotel and got a really long tour, where I myself was not doing well, I was so hot and felt like I was going to faint. At the end of this very long tour, I was like ‘Where would we have our ceremony?’ and they were like ‘Oh, that would be at our museum’ and they said, ‘It’s 45 minutes into the jungle.’ I was thinking, ‘Okay, that sounds aggressive, but I guess I’ll give it a try.’”
She went deep into the jungle in search of the perfect ceremony spot. “A lot of it was down an unpaved dirt road, and I proceeded to think, ‘There’s no way in hell we’ll be able to have our wedding here—how are we going to get our entire party out here down this bumpy dirt road?’”
Once Vanessa pulled up to the museum and walked in, however, all of those doubts quickly disappeared. “I knew that it was our place,” she says. “I felt like I was transported to some kind of utopia, unlike anything I had ever been to before. It was whimsical and magical, and I just fell in love.”
The bride found her wedding planner—Pia Lindstrom—through her friend Alexander Ludwig, who she was working on Bad Boys with. “He was like, ‘Just give it a go, she’s great, I think you guys would hit it off, but if not, no worries,” Vanessa says. “She had done the after-party for Sleepy Hollow, and you know me and my obsession with all things spooky. We hit it off, and so I was like, ‘Cool, let’s rock ‘n’ roll!’”
For her wedding look, Vanessa wanted a dress that felt sleek, modern, and sexy, with a shape inspired by the ’90s supermodels. She ended up choosing a gown by Vera Wang—a light ivory chartreuse bias-cut cowl-neck slip dress with a plunging back. The veil was light ivory tulle with custom embroidery that read: “Mrs. T December 2nd, 2023” in a gothic font.
After sending her stylist Jason Bolden a ton of reference photos, the two went to visit Vera Wang’s New York atelier in person. Vanessa walked around the store and pulled a few of the dresses that she was drawn to—and ultimately, the dress that she wore for her ceremony was actually the first one she tried on. “I put it on, and I was like ‘It’s perfect. It’s easy, it’s simple, and it’s chic,” she says. “It was exactly what I wanted, but we obviously had to spruce it up a little and add some extra love to it so that it was special, just for me. I wanted it to look like I was floating and loved the cape and veil combo,” she says.
“Vera’s been an amazing friend and supporter of mine,” Vanessa says. “I’ve always felt so confident and sexy and feminine whenever I’m in her clothes. And so, I was like ‘You know, that’s the vibe…that’s what I want to be feeling like for my wedding day. She also has such an amazing resume of women that she’s dressed for the most important day of their lives, and I was like, ‘Who better to do it than a friend?’”
The bride also knew she wanted her veil to be a dramatic moment. “When I saw the cape, I thought I might as well try that on as well,” she says. “I love the whole ethereal bohemian vibe—that will always be a part of me, but I didn’t want it to be the main thing.” Her ceremony shoes, meanwhile, were from Paris Texas.
