Start Slideshow View Grid Start Slideshow 52

A Wedding of Vivid Color at Horseshoe Bay Resort in the Texas Hill Country

By Cathleen Freedman | Photography by 

Caroline Lima Photography

|Planning by 

Keely Thorne Events

Appropriately, Sarah Delly and Matt Miller’s love story begins at a wedding in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The bride, Sarah’s friend from high school, and the groom, Matt’s longtime friend, intuited a potential connection between the two and sat them together at the reception, where Sarah and Matt spent the whole night chatting.

They began dating, and two years later, Matt surprised Sarah with a proposal. She showed up at his house for date night, assuming it would just be dinner at their favorite Dallas restaurant, Town Hearth. Instead, Matt handed her a Christmas ornament that read “The Millers, Est. 2022” and got down on one knee. Afterward, they went to their favorite speakeasy for an engagement party with their nearest and dearest in attendance.

Even before getting engaged, Sarah dreamed of marrying Matt at her family’s lake house in Horseshoe Bay. “It’s the perfect mix of the lakeside and the Texas Hill Country,” she notes. She has also always been a purveyor of original, unique, and sentimental tastes. When it came to planning her wedding, her aesthetic would be no different. “My wedding planner, Beth Werner with Keely Thorne Events, and my parents worked with Horseshoe Bay Resort to have the ceremony and reception take place on the Cap Rock Driving Range, a location they had never used before for an event to make my vision come to life,” she says. Sarah also wanted her wedding to “scream color,” in tasteful fashion, of course. An ardent admirer of The Color Condition’s vibrant streamers, she centered their designs in the planning process and called it the wedding’s “crown jewel.” Caroline Lima Photography documented the light and airy occasion on camera.

“With all the color, I wanted to make sure the look and design were still elevated yet playful,” Sarah admits. Beth helped her achieve this look with details like ombre table flowers, different colored napkins at each place setting, and coordinating flowers with the girls’ dresses. The color carried over to the watercolor Carly Creative Co. invitation suite.

Sarah started the weekend’s welcome party with a meaningful custom outfit. She saved the Alice + Olivia dress she wore the night she met Matt three years earlier and repurposed it for the day. Designer Braylee Flaska converted the piece into a skirt and created a bejeweled white crop to match. Sarah asserts, “It was such a neat story to tell my friends and was a fun mix-up from all of the white!”

Finding her wedding dress, though, was a rather over and underwhelming ordeal. She trapezed between Dallas and Houston ateliers, seeing nothing that felt like her or her style. Eventually, she wandered into Nardos by herself. “Truly, that’s how anticlimactic this was getting,” she laughs about the gown search. Instead of being disappointed yet again, she was floored by the designer’s selections. She called her mother who immediately booked a flight that week. By the next weekend, she, her mother, and her sister were customizing a dress with the Nardos team.

Sarah paired her bespoke gown with minimal accessories, allowing the dress to stand on its own, and a bouquet by Stems of Austin. For her “something borrowed,” she wore her family friend’s diamond studs. Lovely Kind Beauty applied her dewy bridal makeup.

Matt looked dapper in a Byron Tuxedo from Threads in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Sarah shares, “I had an embroidered note in my handwriting sewn into the inside of the tuxedo and forgot to tell him, so he didn’t even see it until the day after the wedding.”

On October 1, 2022, guests gathered at the Apple Rock Golf Course, while Gabe Baker serenaded them. The officiant, Katie Montgomery Mears, was Sarah’s small group leader at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Houston before Sarah moved to Dallas, so she was incredibly grateful Katie ventured out to Horseshoe Bay for the nuptials. “One of the most meaningful parts of a wedding for me is when the officiant asks the congregation if they promise to support and pray for the marriage, and I was so overwhelmed hearing our family and friends make that same promise for us,” Sarah reflects. Katie made the sermon engaging and lighthearted, easily captivating the audience. Sarah adds, “It is no easy feat to keep people engaged at an outdoor wedding in Texas, but Katie made our ceremony truly memorable.”

The reception followed inside Whim’s streamer-laden Sperry tent. Sarah’s parents and her groom delivered toasts. By far one of the most hilarious moments of the evening was when Matt revealed that Sarah had actually picked out her wedding planner long before she ever met him. She agrees, “He wasn’t wrong!”

The couple forewent the formality of a wedding cake and served Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams—the bride’s favorite—and brandy pops on the dance floor. Manhattan Band kept the energy high, which wasn’t hard to do when everyone—kids and grandparents alike—wore the rainbow wigs and mustaches distributed during the evening. The newlyweds shared their first dance to “Dancing in the Moonlight.” This was amusing to watch, thanks to the few dance classes they took and the throwback elementary school-style moves they threw in.

Overall, Sarah is dazzled by how well-coordinated and seamless her wedding was. “You dream about the day for so many months, but you’re always working with vendors one on one,” she confides. “It is incredible to see all the vendors working together to bring my vision to life!”