Before she pictured the dress, the ring, or even the groom, singer-songwriter Sara Woody could see the boots. “I had a little-girl dream of designing cowboy boots for my wedding,” says Woody, who married John Fitch at a treehouse resort near Austin in a “cosmic rodeo”–themed four-day affair. “The boots led the whole way.”
Her vision: an intricate leather mosaic of symbols meaningful to the couple, including monarch butterflies, the planet Saturn, San Pedro cacti, mushrooms, rainbows, doves, and a lacelike pattern mimicking Mexican paper cutouts on peachy ombré leather. The wedding’s invitations, color palette, decor, and even the design of the dress—which unzipped dramatically at the hem for a splashy reveal—would follow.
Nevena Christi, owner and designer at El Paso–based Rocketbuster Handmade Custom Boots, never batted an eye at Woody’s wish list. She has been turning out practically byzantine custom boots for nearly thirty years, decorating the heels of the likes of Sylvester Stallone and Oprah. Her order form reads “First thing to remember is . . . there are NO RULES!” (And everyone knows brides hate rules.)
“I think I called Nevena the week after I got engaged,” says Woody. “And said, ‘Let’s go.’ ”
Among the requests Christi has received recently from brides: make the entire boot twinkle like a disco ball; include depictions of destinations from Amherst to China; create a yellow-and-white striped interior to resemble a McDonald’s french fry container. For brides with ample means—custom-boot prices start firmly in the four-digit category and can go up to $15,000—it’s a design opportunity to truly lose their minds. (And everyone knows brides love to lose their minds.)
“I’ve got six boots for brides with orange ‘rush’ stickers on them right next to me,” says Christi, who was a design director at Nicole Miller in New York before she and her husband, Marty Snortum, took over Rocketbuster. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a summer like that.” Christi has outfitted brides from California to Cape Cod and estimates that of the 350 handmade boots Rocketbuster turns out each year, around twenty of them are for brides.
For a ranchy set—particularly in Texas—custom cowboy boots for weddings are nothing new, say the bootmakers we spoke with. But there’s no question the reach of the trend is expanding and the popularity is rising. “For a certain part of the world, it’s a long-standing tradition,” says Sarah Means, cofounder of Dallas-based fashion cowboy boot company Miron Crosby, who grew up on a West Texas ranch. “But it definitely seems to be gaining traction or maybe getting a little bit more mainstream, more far-flung, as we see the appeal of the cowboy boot widening.”
In other words, custom boots are not just for cowboys and cowgirls anymore. “They feel fancy—particularly when they’re custom,” says Means. “But they’re great for dancing and running around in.” She says bridal clients range from rancher’s daughters to fashion girlies and influencers in New York City and the Hamptons. With intricate designs, handmade craftsmanship, and eye-popping price tags, custom boots can feel elevated enough for even the least rustic of weddings.
It’s no secret that Western wear is having a fashion moment (you can thank Yellowstone, Bella Hadid, Beyoncé, and the pandemic for making country life chic), and brands such as Tecovas and Boot Barn cite major upticks in sales, according to fashion-industry news site Business of Fashion. High-end and fast-fashion designers who’ve never set foot on a ranch are cranking out bolo ties, boots, and fringe jackets, while heritage Americana brands have increased their reach.
“We’re in a big rise to a peak that doesn’t seem to have an end,” says Trey Gilmore, director of product development and men’s design at El Paso–based luxury bootmaker Lucchese. “It’s far and away above the urban cowboy era of the nineteen-eighties. Back then it was more of a costume people would wear to go dance at the honky-tonks. Now it’s more of a lifestyle for folks. They wear cowboy boots with their ten-thousand-dollar suits; they wear boots on their twenty acres.”
Now the not-so-humble cowboy boot is creeping into the most sacred of wardrobe choices—the wedding ensemble. Gilmore himself married this summer, to Christy Plott Gilmore, a partner in her family business, American Tanning & Leather. The country’s largest and oldest alligator tannery is where Lucchese sources its large wild gator skins. “It was a given we were going to wear alligator boots,” says Trey. “It wasn’t if, but what.”
He designed three pairs of boots for the wedding, held at the Plott family tannery in Georgia—a hot pink pair with the couple’s initials and hearts for Christy to wear to the rehearsal dinner, a white pearl alligator boot with Texas wildflowers for her for the wedding, and a navy blue pair for himself. Christy and her team labored fastidiously over the hue of the white pearl, creating at least twenty alligator swatches to match her dress. The boots outshone every decision that day but the vows. “To me they were the most important part of my wardrobe—over the dress, the veil, anything else,” Christy says. “Really,everything else centered around it.”
This month, Mercedes Maddox, whose family owns Bowie-based American Hat Company, will wed Jake Bloomer, vice president of Bloomer Trailers in Salado, which builds custom horse trailers that cost as much as a house. Since they’re both firmly entrenched in the Western industry, it was natural for Bloomer to propose at the Cowtown Coliseum, in Fort Worth. But their wedding will be a long way—physically, culturally—from the rodeo.
“I knew I didn’t want a Texas wedding,” says Maddox, who wears fashion cowboy boots in her daily life. “I knew I wanted it in California, but I thought it would be fun to bring some of the Texas in.” At their black-tie affair at the tony Old Hollywood–style hotel Rosewood Miramar Beach in Montecito, California, the bride will wear a form-fitting lace runway gown from Alexander McQueen that’s fit for the most glittering stiletto. But instead she’s sporting a powder blue custom cowboy boot by Miron Crosby (her “something blue”).
Her boots riff off a Miron Crosby design with a celestial pattern but in custom colors, with the couple’s initials and wedding date inlaid on the pull straps and handwritten notes—one from Maddox’s mother, one from Bloomer—imprinted on the inside. Bloomer, Maddox’s groom, also opted for custom wedding boots—his, a classic black alligator personalized with the couple’s initials, by heritage bootmaker M. L. Leddy’s in Fort Worth and San Angelo.
Some brides and grooms are coming in to boot shops together to create their wedding boots, writing notes to place in the interior, planning monograms and designs in a prewedding ceremony akin to a cake tasting. “Western-style weddings have become an industry in itself,” says Mark Dunlap, vice president and general manager of M. L. Leddy’s, which offers both made-to-measure boots and a stock that can be personalized for weddings. “A lot of times couples will come in together to make their boots, and we’ll make it very special—we’ll pour wine and try to make it really fun for them.”
At Miron Crosby, with boutiques in Dallas, Houston, and Aspen, Colorado, Means says they’re seeing the same trend. Entire wedding parties sometimes come in together. The Western wedding boom has been so strong that this year the company launched Miron Crosby’s Little Crème Boot Shop, extending and formalizing its wedding collections and “bridal concierge services.”
While designers say whites, metallics, champagnes, and florals are popular for weddings, so are wildly personal designs that become art pieces, wardrobe staples, conversation starters, and family heirlooms that last long after the wedding. “This is about creating something they can wear again,” says Christi, from Rocketbuster. “You’re never going to wear your wedding dress again.”
