Actress Debby Ryan and Twenty One Pilots’ Joshua Dun Planned Their Whirlwind Austin Wedding in Just 28 Days

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.”

The morning of the wedding, Debby’s bridesmaids and her and Joshua’s mothers gathered together to get ready, playing games and having tea in between glam and dress steaming. “I started the day laughing and crying, surrounded by my tribe sending me off on my way,” Debby says.

That evening, guests gathered at a hospitality room that had been set up with a caffeine bar and music. From there, they were shuttled to the church. There was a strings section playing, and the groomsmen walked in to a soulful rendition of “Gangsta’s Paradise.” “[When everyone was in place] I began to hear ‘Hoppipola’ by Sigur Rós, and the church doors opened, and I saw him waiting,” Debby says. “I took in everyone beaming as I moved though the extra-long church, drawn toward my favorite person. When [our officiant] Dave asked who gives me away, my dad responded, ‘She does, and we support this decision wholeheartedly,’ which brought the first tear to my eye.”

The couple wrote their own vows, and everyone laughed at the surprising consistency in them. “Because what is vowing to be together forever without us both acknowledging my annual trips to the emergency room and the significance of The Fast and the Furious franchise in our relationship?” Debby jokes.

When it was time for the rings, the church doors opened and the couple’s dog, Jim, was sitting in a bow tie with the ring pillow on his collar. “Joshua called him and he sprinted down the aisle, and after discovering the knots were a little too tight, Joshua asked if anyone had a knife. About four people immediately brandished pocket knives—because, Texas!—then Jim watched as we ringed each other and kissed.” The strings picked back up on “All of the Lights” as the newlyweds walked out of church, married, with their best friends and family behind them.

“The ceremony was the perfect balance,” Joshua says. “I felt like it was game night at our house, and this was the ultimate game, and boy did I win! I remember every detail from how it felt to be walking down the aisle, to the full-body chills I got watching Debby walk down toward me. The advice that I had been given by multiple people was to allow ourselves to soak it all in. My natural instinct is to be nervous and want the whole thing to be over with so we can just enjoy being married, but I decided to take the advice of my friends and enjoy every moment, even the ones where I felt out of my element and uncomfortable, as I always am whenever the attention is on me.”

After a few toasts, when dinner was in full swing, the newlyweds ran upstairs to have a quick meal privately and change into clothes they could dance in. “Taking that time to bask in the ‘heck yeah, we’re married’ realness really set us up to celebrate with such deep and unencumbered joy,” Debby says. “I asked my mom to bring her veil so that I could reference it and surprised her by putting it on for the reception. I had bought this Are You Am I silk slip dress for the honeymoon and popped into that, paired with the family pearls and our white Cortezes. I underestimated how much dancing was going to happen, so right before midnight I threw on this DKNY, which was so festive. I loved how bright it is in the hard flash, the reflective silver appearing whiter-than-white in the lights of the dance floor.”

Guests were encouraged to change into dancing clothes, and the dance floor was alive well into the morning hours. There were milk and cookie shooters, as well as Italian wedding soup and gazpacho at midnight. More toasts were given before the crowd counted down, followed by even more dancing. “When the DJ had to stop and the hotel needed their space back, a lot of folks were still in full swing,” Debby says. “Finally, everyone dispersed into their hotel rooms or walked to spots on Rainey Street, but a ragtag handful ended up in our room, where we mostly played games and exchanged gratitude.”