JONI KUHN

VENUE OWNER + OPERATOR

Joni's story begins, fittingly, with two very different kinds of horsepower.

Born in Dallas and raised in nearby Addison, Texas, Joni grew up with an unshakable love of animals — any animal, of any kind — and a restless drive to be around them, train them, and understand them. That instinct would eventually carry her from the show ring to the cockpit and back again, in a life that reads less like a resume and more like an adventure novel. After graduating from Southern Methodist University, she took her first job as a flight instructor at Addison Airport, launching a career in aviation that would see her earn an extraordinary collection of ratings — single and multi-engine, commercial, instrument, flight instructor, instrument instructor, multi-engine instructor, and helicopter — few pilots, let alone women of her generation, can claim. Flying became a family tradition long before it became a metaphor. Her husband, in fact, was one of her very first flight students — a chance beginning that led to a 28-year marriage and two sons, raised together in nearby Plano, both of whom took just as naturally to the skies as their mother did.

But if aviation gave Joni her wings, horses gave her roots. She began competing at just ten years old, cutting her teeth on barrel racing and riding for her High School Rodeo Team before trading the arena for English jumping, and eventually devoting fourteen years to the demanding, exhilarating sport of Eventing. In time, she found her true calling in the elegant, old-world discipline of competitive Carriage driving — a sport that would take her from the Texas State Fair and the Fort Worth Stock Show to arenas in Kentucky, New York, Florida, and Las Vegas, driving Friesian horses that have gone on to become world champions in their own right. Along the way, her partnership with her magnificent Friesian geldings, Aandrik and Zobe, even landed her on the big screen, driving the pair in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Perhaps most unforgettably, Joni twice drove a team of Four-in-Hand Friesians at the Queen's Windsor Horse Show in England, where she was personally greeted by Queen Elizabeth II and judged in her class by Prince Philip himself, who awarded her a third-place ribbon — a memory she still counts among the great honors of her life.

In 2015, with the same determination that carried her through decades of competition, Joni turned her attention to a new kind of project: 130 acres of raw, undeveloped cow pasture in Aubrey, Texas, with no roads, no utilities, and not a single structure in sight. Piece by piece, she transformed that blank canvas into a thriving working farm, complete with barns, pens, paddocks, a workshop, and fields of hay stretching toward the horizon. Four years later, ready to step back from the world of competitive showing, Joni set her sights on a new dream — a wedding and events venue built on the very land she had shaped with her own hands. Ground broke in 2019, and Bella Cavalli Events welcomed its very first guests in May of 2020.

What Joni loves most, though, is how seamlessly her two worlds have merged. Nearly every wedding at Bella Cavalli carries a touch of the animal kingdom she has adored since childhood: brides arrive at the ceremony by horse-drawn carriage, guests are greeted by a pair of beloved Beer Burros and two curious alpacas, and presiding over it all with quiet, regal charm is Queen Sheba, a striking white dromedary camel who has become something of a Bella Cavalli celebrity in her own right. In the years since opening, what began as raw pasture has become a cherished backdrop for love stories, having hosted nearly 1,000 weddings and welcomed an estimated 140,000 guests — a legacy Joni continues to build, one celebration, and one four-legged guest of honor, at a time.