WIMBERLEY FLOOD TESTS HOUSTONCOUPLE
The Altobellis never expected to have a conventional wedding.
Jacqueline Gonzalez Altobelli didn’t become one of those Pinterest-addicted brides until two weeks before the big day, she says.
Their courtship was modern — she met Jason Altobelli on OK Cupid, an Internet dating site. The engagement was spontaneous. He proposed last summer at 4 a.m. on an impromptu camping trip; the couple had attended Beyoncé and Jay Z’s concert the night before.
But they also are incredibly sentimental, says Jacqueline, 32, the marketing director for early-music ensemble Ars Lyrica Houston. Their first date was at Zelko Bistro in the Heights, right around the corner from where they live now, and she treasures her keepsakes and photographs from the meeting.
Above all, they just want to be together.
The floods over Memorial Day weekend tested their mettle sooner than most.
“We had spent two months looking at 45 venues near Austin. Jason hated all of them,” Jacqueline says. Jason, who’s 29 and a sales director for Appian, wanted something natural. “He grew up on a ranch and didn’t want to see buildings everywhere.”
By January, they’d settled on Old Glory Ranch in Wimberley.
Thursday, May 21, 175 friends and family members gathered in the Texas Hill Country for the wedding. Three large homes had been rented to accommodate the wedding party; guests had flown in from Mexico City, Portland and Fort Worth.
It was clear from the get-go that the weather wasn’t going to cooperate for the joint bachelor/ bachelorette festivities that evening — a tour of local distilleries, wineries and breweries — so the group opted for a backyard barbecue at the bridal-party house instead. Groomsmen Christopher Quinten whipped up cocktails while the bridesmaids jumped into the Jacuzzi and sampled baconwrapped hot dogs.
On Friday, the wedding party stumbled across the Cypress Creek Reserve Rum Distillery after a bread-pudding brunch in town. With each tasting pour, a bridesmaid or groomsmen toasted the happy couple.
Despite ominous clouds and a bleak weather forecast, Jacqueline’s pleas to move the wedding rehearsal were unheeded. She chose to look on the bright side and focus on how beautiful the pictures of everyone dressed all in white against a drizzling al fresco backdrop would be. By the time they reached the Leaning Pear for dinner, the sun made a brief, albeit welcome, cameo.
“Jason and I just kind of looked at each other and thought, ‘Wow, this is what we wanted!’” she recalls. “The food was epic, but it was really about the people; you can’t put a price tag on that. Our nephews found a heartshaped rock in the river behind the restaurant. It sits on our mantle now.”
Jacqueline went back into town on the morning of her wedding to have a photograph of her late father resized to fit inside a locket. She wanted to honor his memory by tying it around her arm with a cobalt ribbon as her something blue. Once her errands were complete, she had only 30 minutes left to spare before the ceremony. She did her hair and drove herself to the venue, where she quickly changed into her wedding dress.
Raindrops fell steadily during Jacqueline’s walk down the aisle to an instrumental version of “I See the Light” from Disney’s “Frozen.” Guests clutched umbrellas as the couple read their vows.
At the candlelit indoor reception, after a seated dinner, the newly minted Mr. and Mrs. Altobelli surprised the crowd with a choreographed first dance to “La Vie en Rose.” Their DJ was only into his second song when the power went out in the ballroom — and throughout Wimberley. The mariachi band took over, and taco trays were passed around, but panic spread as news of road closures and flooded parking lots circulated. The couple’s send-off was canceled.
Stranded wedding guests had gathered back at the bridal party’s pitch-black rental house. “Everyone lit candles and stood out on this huge balcony where we could see the river,” Jacqueline says. “You could see bursts of color from the transformers floating in the water. It was like a fireworks show.”
The sheriff arrived a few hours later and told them to evacuate. “He walked us outside and pointed his flashlight at the river. The water was super high, and I saw a tree, then another tree, and then part of a house.”
Some of the group found shelter at a local nursing home, while others managed to get as far as Buda. The newlyweds spent their wedding night sleeping next to each other on a couch and chair pushed together at the groom’s parent’s rental house; Jason woke up every 30 minutes to check the water levels.
“I started crying on the way back to check on the bridal party house the next day,” says Jacqueline. “Cars were smashed into homes, people were standing on cement squares where their houses used to be just looking for their belongings.”
The Altobellis’ honeymoon flight from San Antonio to France was canceled. But a Delta employee found them a new flight and rebooked. A manager at the Hyatt Regency Paris Étoile was waiting to receive the couple and expressed her concern before showing them to an upgraded room with unobstructed views of the Eiffel Tower. Complimentary champagne and macaroons helped kick off their 12-day European adventure.
“We watched the news (from Paris) and realized that people were missing, people had died,” Jacqueline says. “I could sit here in retrospect and think about all the things that went wrong, but no one got hurt at my wedding. We’re lucky that our family made it through.”