Millennial couple first to say ‘I do’ at RodeoHouston

Early Saturday morning, Chris Handley pulled up to a locked gate outside of NRG Park. Eight boxes of wedding decorations crowded the backseat and bed of his pickup truck. The clock on his dashboard read 6 a.m., some two hours before the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo officially opened for the day.

All Handley knew was that he was looking for a guy named Keith.

Handley was told Keith could help him unload the banners, signs and tabletop décor into the Champion Wine Garden before rodeo security caught on.

They weren’t breaking the rules. Not exactly. There was no protocol for getting married at the rodeo.

But by the end of March 7, Handley and his fiancée, Baochau Ton, would be the first to get hitched at RodeoHouston.

The couple met online two years ago. Handley, 34, is chief of the Organized Crime Division of the Harris County district attorney’s office; Ton, 25, is a banker with JP Morgan Chase.

“I actually canceled on our first date,” Ton said. “He later got back in touch, and I thought, ‘Let’s give this guy a shot.’”

One of their first dates was Ton’s her first-ever visit to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.

“There was something about him from the get-go. He wasn’t like anyone else I had met at that point,” Ton said. “He wasn’t what I expected, but everything I wanted. A carbon copy of my dream man.”

However smitten, she played it cool. “Of course, I didn’t tell want to tell him that and scare him off.”

When the couple moved in together just shy of the 12-month mark, Ton’s parents were nervous. But she was certain, he was the one.

On the one-year anniversary of their first date, Handley proposed at their Oak Forest home.

“Originally, we were just going to elope to Ireland, but that went out the window pretty quickly after we told Baochau’s sister our plan,” Handley said.

As a teenager, Ton had seen the movie “Leap Year,” a romantic comedy starring Amy Adams, and decided that getting married on the cliffs of Ireland would be romantic, dreamlike and different from what everyone would expect.

Her parents begged the bride to reconsider. “Their idea is that I’d want immediate family around to witness our vows and share that moment with us.”

So Ton reevaluated.

“My mother’s pretty ill; she was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer years ago, so the fact that she’s made it this far is a miracle,” she said. “That’s why it meant so much to have her there. It’s a lifelong memory now, that we were able to cherish that moment with our families.”

Because Handley hails from Dayton, Ohio, and Ton is originally from Dallas, the groom wanted the most Houston wedding imaginable. That meant taking everyone to the rodeo.

He pitched a wild compromise.

“We went on our honeymoon first to take our wedding pictures,” Handley said. “It was very unorthodox.”

That’s how he, his bride and their wedding photographer, Allison Bolin, wound up climbing the Cliffs of Moher, on Ireland’s southwestern edge, during the last week of February — in the middle of a storm.

Ton wore hiking boots under her A-line wedding gown to brave the 60-mph winds and 30-degree windchill.

Halfway up the trail, a guide stopped to whisk the bride and photographer up in a golf cart.

“Apparently in Ireland, the groom has to walk,” Handley said.

Hail and sleet aside, Ton wouldn’t change a thing. “Somehow we managed to still get a few cool photos.”

Their Houston nuptials fared better.

On Saturday, the couple began their wedding day festivities with a handfasting ceremony at Étoile Cuisine et Bar in Uptown Park. The bride and grooms’ parents met for the first time, and their immediate families witnessed Ton and Handley bind their hands in ribbon to “tie the knot” in the Irish folk custom.

Meanwhile, on the rodeo grounds, 75 of the couples’ closest family and friends busily decorated a tent in the wine garden.

Yoakum Packing Co., a longtime rodeo vendor, wheeled over brisket and corn dogs for the wedding dinner.

By the time the newlyweds arrived for their reception, everything had fallen into place. Even the bride’s favorite cake decorator, Cakes by Tina, breezed through the ticket line, thanks to RodoeHouston volunteers.

“We don’t even know his last name, but this guy, Mark, waved us through the gold badge line,” Ton says. “That small thing meant so much to me.”

“When our guests showed up in their cocktail dresses and formal attire, all of the HPD guys helped them jump the crowd. Everyone got a kick out of that,” Handley said.

The groom’s favorite moment was having his friend, Judge Josh Hill of Harris County’s 232nd Criminal Court, sign the couple’s marriage certificate in the wine garden.

The bride was moved to tears inside NRG Center when a livestock exhibitor let her pose with a prized goat.

“I told our caterer we’re coming back every year to get a corn dog from them,” Ton said. “An anniversary corn dog.”

amber.elliott@chron.com