Lainey Wilson Squeezed a Wedding Between Festival and Award Shows

Country music’s busiest woman just added“bride”to her already stacked resume. Lainey Wilson, the 33-year-old powerhouse pulling in seven nominations at the 61st Academy of Country Music Awards, somehow carved out time to marry Devlin“Duck”Hodges between headlining the Stagecoach Music Festival and walking the red carpet at the ACMs.

The wedding happened on May 10 at Ruskin Cave in Dickson, Tennessee—a venue they discovered completely by accident. According to Wilson, she and Hodges were driving backroads in Tennessee when they spotted a billboard for the cave. The decision? Instant. As Wilson told Vogue, Hodges asked,“You wanna get married there?”and she answered,“Done deal.”They dropped by the property, fell in love with its natural beauty and simplicity, and made it official.

The ceremony unfolded like something out of a romantic dream: a cobblestone ledge at the foot of a waterfall, the sound of trickling water and singing birds, a spring breeze, and Wilson arriving in a white horse-drawn carriage to walk down the aisle with her father toward Hodges at the altar. Their friend and mentor Wes Williams served as officiant. Wilson ditched her signature bell bottoms for an Oscar de la Renta gown adorned with tiny Japanese cherry blossoms—a choice with meaning.“The cherry blossom represents living in the moment,”she explained,“and that’s exactly what we did.”

The whole thing was peak Lainey: romantic, intentional, and squeezed into a schedule that would exhaust most people. Just days before, she’d headlined Stagecoach with a 90-minute set in Indio, California on April 24. Days after, she was at the ACMs red carpet on Sunday, May 17, casually dropping wisdom about marriage to cohosts Kelly Sutton and Amber Anderson:“As long as I got my phone, my keys, my wallet, my man, I’m good.”

Wilson and Hodges went public with their relationship at the ACM Awards in May 2023, after dating since 2021. He’s a retired Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback, and their engagement was announced in February 2025. But the real story here isn’t just that they got married—it’s that she made it happen without letting the chaos win. In an industry that demands everything, she found her moment anyway.