Austin Wedding: Adam Mena & Jesse Parker Stowell

Adam Mena & Jesse Parker Stowell

Grooms Jesse Parker Stowell (left) and Adam Mena treated guests at their spring wedding to an Austin-centric theme.

PHOTO BY JD SWIGER AND JOHN DAVID WEDDINGS

THE COUPLE

Adam Mena, chief business officer at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, and Jesse Parker Stowell, a popular publicist at Parker|Phoenix PR, met on a dating app in 2021. Two years later, while the couple enjoyed a summer vacation in the Azores and Lisbon, Jesse proposed.

THE PARTY

They incorporated nods to UT with burnt orange accents and paraded two miniature “longhorns” (highland cows) onto the dance floor to the crowd’s surprise, while also inviting guests to pose in front of a green screen displaying Austin’s best street art and murals.

THE SIPS AND SWEETS

“We didn’t do a normal wedding cake and instead did bites of sticky toffee pudding (Adam’s favorite), macarons in the wedding colors from BOA Steakhouse, and Zed’s New Zealand-style soft serve ice cream,” Jesse explains. Cocktails with Tito’s and LALO also kept the crowd buzzing.

WHAT WE LEARNED

“We ordered wooden flowers that could be dyed in any color of the rainbow from Sola Wood. We loved these because we could order them months in advance, they didn’t wilt and can be kept as keepsakes forever,” Adam says.

April 24, 2026
Assembly Hall