This article was originally published on Crafting Your Home. A human contributor also wrote and edited the post.
Emma Roberts is officially a married woman. The actress tied the knot with longtime boyfriend Cody John on Saturday, July 25, in an outdoor ceremony held at his family’s estate in Sun Valley, Idaho, choosing a small, nature-filled celebration over anything resembling a splashy Hollywood affair.
The wedding capped off a relationship the two have kept notably private since it first became public back in 2022, and it arrived with exactly the kind of understated, personal touches fans of the couple might have expected from two actors who have long preferred to keep their romance out of the headlines.
The ceremony itself took place outdoors on a wooden platform, reportedly lasting around 45 minutes despite temperatures climbing to roughly 95 degrees that day.
Rather than opting for a traditional processional, Roberts walked down the aisle hand-in-hand with her five-year-old son, Rhodes, whom she shares with ex-partner Garrett Hedlund, giving the moment an especially personal touch that reflected how central her son has become to her life in recent years.
Guests at the wedding included Roberts’ aunt, Julia Roberts, along with her husband, Danny Moder, adding a bit of extra star power to what was otherwise designed to feel like an intimate family gathering rather than a splashy industry event.
A Custom Gown Nine Months In The Making
Roberts’ wedding look became one of the most talked-about details of the entire celebration. She wore a custom Monique Lhuillier silk chiffon gown built specifically for the occasion, using roughly 25 yards of fabric dyed to a custom shade the designer named “antique rose,” a nod to Roberts’ own middle name.
The gown featured a removable draped shawl and a chapel-length veil paired with a lace voilette that Roberts had pushed back so it read more like a headband than a traditional veil, a detail that quickly sparked some good-natured debate among fans once wedding photos began circulating online.
Lhuillier detailed just how much work went into the design, telling Vogue, “This gown took nine months to make, and I would say it took close to 1,000 hours to complete.”
Roberts herself spoke about the creative direction behind the dress in an interview with the outlet published the day after her wedding, describing a clear vision rooted in her personal taste rather than convention.
“I didn’t really know what I wanted,” she said of starting the design process. “I just knew that I wanted it to feel very vintage-inspired. I’m obsessed with antique books and treasure hunting, and I love collecting old ephemera, so I really wanted that to shine through in the dress.”
That same instinct led her away from a traditional pure white gown entirely, opting instead for the subtly dyed rose tone Lhuillier created for her.
Roberts leaned fully into the vintage, slightly whimsical aesthetic she was going for, describing the finished look in playful terms. “I kind of wanted to look like a ghost, a little antique ghost doll,” she said, before adding that once she actually tried on the completed gown, the effect landed exactly the way she’d hoped. “I feel like an elfin fairy,” she said.
Later in the evening, Roberts changed into a second Monique Lhuillier design for the after-party, this time an archival black look that offered a striking contrast to her romantic, rose-toned ceremony gown.
John, for his part, kept things simple and fitting for the outdoor setting, wearing a classic brown suit that matched the relaxed, rustic tone of the celebration.
A Four-Year Relationship Built On Privacy
Roberts and John’s road to marriage stretched back roughly four years, beginning when the two first went public with their relationship in August 2022 after John shared a photo of the couple kissing on a boat, captioned simply, “Sweet sweet.”
The pair had reportedly met through mutual friends, and from early on, both seemed committed to keeping the relationship largely out of the public eye, a preference Roberts has spoken about directly in past interviews.
“I never want to talk about relationships I’m in or that are ending or have ended,” she told Cosmopolitan in 2019, well before her relationship with John began. “It’s hard enough to be with someone by yourself, let alone with an audience.”
That same instinct toward privacy carried through to how Roberts announced their engagement in July 2024. She shared a photo showing off her ring with a caption that doubled as an inside joke about her own family’s track record with oversharing: “Putting this here before my mom tells everyone.”
The line referenced an earlier moment when Roberts’ mother, Kelly Cunningham, had posted a photo of Rhodes’ face on social media without asking Roberts first, prompting a lighthearted public exchange between mother and daughter at the time, one that ended with Cunningham herself acknowledging the running joke in the comments.
The engagement announcement quickly drew congratulations from friends across the industry, including actresses Lindsay Lohan, Lea Michele, and Britt Robertson, all of whom left supportive comments celebrating the news.
Keeping The Celebration Close To Home
Choosing Sun Valley, Idaho, and John’s own family estate as the wedding location fit squarely into the low-key approach the couple has taken to their relationship from the start.
Rather than a large-scale destination wedding or an event built around media coverage, the ceremony centered on close family and friends gathered outdoors, with Rhodes’ role walking his mother down the aisle standing out as the day’s most personal touch.
Roberts has spent years being selective about how much of her romantic life she shares publicly, and the wedding’s intimate scale reflected that same instinct even as the specific details, from the dress to the guest list, eventually made their way into public reporting.
With the ceremony now behind them, Roberts and John move forward as a married couple continuing a partnership that has largely unfolded away from the spotlight by design.
Between the deeply personal wedding gown, the family estate setting, and a five-year-old walking his mother toward the altar, the day managed to reflect exactly the kind of understated, family-centered celebration Roberts and John seemed to be aiming for from the very beginning, even with a bit of Hollywood glamour, courtesy of Julia Roberts and a nine-month custom gown, woven in along the way.
Roberts has spoken previously about her relationship with John in warmer, more personal terms even while keeping most specifics private, at one point telling PEOPLE about a particularly memorable shared movie night.
“I watched the movie ‘The Iron Claw’ with my boyfriend, and the two of us were sobbing,” she said. “It was just a disaster of crying and then laughing at each other for crying, which made us cry even harder.”
That kind of glimpse, offered sparingly and almost always in passing, has largely defined how the public has come to know their relationship over the past several years, small, warm details shared occasionally rather than a running public narrative.
Their wedding followed that same pattern in miniature, offering just enough detail- the dress, the venue, the guest list- to satisfy public curiosity without ever feeling like the couple had opened their day up entirely to the world.
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