When Andrea and Keith Attkiss started thinking about her wedding location, she knew it had to be Mexico. After all, the city of Miguel de Allende is very important to Andrea’s family. “It’s a mountainside town that is just full of culture, full of arts, painted red and orange doors, just super beautiful,” she says. “My grandmother was an artist, and she would go down there and paint. It’s just an idyllic place.”
The couple was thrilled when they stumbled upon Casa Hyder, a large property with a pool and sprawling gardens. “It’s owned by these amazing Texans that have an eclectic collection of art. It’s incredible. You walk in and every single room is just full of art, full of personality,” Andrea says. Her uncle Lark Mason, an auctioneer that appears on Antiques Roadshow, is a friend of the Hyder family, who are also his clients.
“This house is just a sprawling property in the middle of town, so it was super easy to walk everywhere,” Andrea says. “We were able to house our entire families. Keith has three kids and we had our parents there and siblings. We were all under the same roof.”
Read on for a wildly fun day filled with Carolina Herrera looks, lat- night pool time, and 100-degree temperatures.
The Welcome Party
On Friday night, Andrea, who is the director of marketing and communications for Carolina Herrera, and Keith, who is a plastic surgeon and co-chairman of the Division of Plastic Surgery at Greenwich Hospital, hosted a cocktail event with a taco stand. They had acoustic guitar players and a DJ in the space, which overlooked the city’s main cathedral at sunset. Andrea wore a Carolina Herrera halter dress (naturally) and Christian Louboutin shoes.
The Ceremony
When the ceremony began at 5 P.M., it was still close to 100 degrees outside. Yet despite the heat, the ceremony took place in a back garden on the property, and was officiated by the couple’s friend PJ Pascual, a stylist. Keith and Andrea’s family members walked out to “Tuyo” by Rodrigo Amarante, played by an acoustic guitar duo. “It’s very hard to find music to walk down to the aisle to,” Andrea says. “ I think that was the hardest element for us to choose. You think of these beautiful melodies, but it has to ring, it has to have a meaning.” She and her father entered to “Here Comes the Sun.” “We thought it would rain, so it was just serendipitous,” she adds. As soon as the ceremony wrapped, a mariachi band helped the pair exit and led everyone to a patio on the roof for a sunset cocktail hour.
Andrea wore a Carolina Herrera bridal creation, and Keith wore a custom Zegna suit with shoes from Prada. (He had planned to wear a custom Tom Ford suit that was light blue, but “it was so hot, he couldn’t even put it on,” Andrea says. Instead, he opted for the Zegna and then switched. “I said, ‘Why don’t you wear it for dinner when it cools down? It’s a suit you’ll probably never wear ever again.’”)
The Party
The reception was held in another garden on the estate, in a tent filled with hanging candles and tropical flowers. “I didn’t want anything really traditional white,” Andrea says. “I wanted lots of color to reflect our lives and Mexico, and to not opt for the classic choice.” Andrea changed into a white Elie Saab gown adorned with flowers that she sourced from the Albright Fashion Library. “Mixing designers and having outfit changes ended up being great because it was so hot, so it lightened it up,” the bride explains.
Following the speeches, a seven-piece flamenco band played alongside dancers. And after dinner, which was held in the tent, guests headed to the pool area, where there was a dance floor and a DJ. Traditional Mexican stars hung above the pool, which was lit and filled with petals. “I found this Monique Lhuillier lace bridal gown that I was dying to wear, so I decided to wear it for the cake cutting and the first dance,” Andrea says. She was back in Carolina Herrera for the after-party. All the shoes she wore on Saturday were by Roger Vivier, where she used to work.
“The weddings I’ve been to usually have dinner and dancing in the same spot,” Andrea says. “It was fun to have our guests go through the house and discover the secret gardens and courtyards. Every single moment of the wedding was in a different little area, so you could explore the house from every corner.”
Andrea Feick and Keith Attkiss’s Wedding
Adrienne Gaffney is a features editor at ELLE and previously worked at WSJ Magazine and Vanity Fair.
