Vanessa Hudgens Announces the Birth of Her First Child

Congratulations are in order for Vanessa Hudgens! The High School Musical actor confirmed on Thursday that she has welcomed her first child with her husband, baseball player Cole Tucker. The couple were married in Tulum, Mexico in December 2023, in an intimate ceremony for which Hudgens wore a custom bias-cut slip dress by Vera Wang. “It was genuinely the most magical weekend of my life,” Hudgens told Vogue at the time. “Literally talking about it right now, I’m getting teary-eyed. I couldn’t have dreamt it to be any better. I knew it was going to be magical, but it exceeded my expectations.”

The actor revealed her pregnancy back in March, when she stepped onto the red carpet at the Oscars—at which she served as the host of the official red carpet show with Julianne Hough—wearing a form-fitting black Vera Wang couture gown that accentuated her baby bump, as well as a dazzling white gold and diamond necklace and earrings by Chopard.

While Hudgens took to Instagram to share the news of the birth of her first child, it came in response to a series of intrusive paparazzi images that captured Hudgens leaving the hospital with her child that were published online without her consent. “We’re disappointed that our family’s privacy was disrespected and exploited during this very special time due to the greed of a long-lens camera feeding the media,” Hudgens said. Still, she added, “Despite all of that, mom, dad, and baby are happy and healthy.”

Hudgens and Tucker first met in 2020, during a meditation session over Zoom. “I was literally on the Zoom with my girlfriend, and I started hitting her asking who he was, and she had never seen him before,” Vanessa told Vogue at the time of her wedding. “So I proceeded to look on the Zoom square to find out his name and found him on Instagram—and he sent a DM the next day.” After three years of dating, Tucker proposed by the Eiffel Tower in 2023. “I dropped a hint that that would be the ideal place, but kind of forgot about it because I didn’t want to have any expectations on the trip,” Hudgens noted. “I just wanted to enjoy it for what it was, and he caught me completely off guard.”

Ten months later, they married in the heart of the Mexican jungle, at the eclectic Azulik City of Arts in Tulum. “I am so grateful that we got to have a private wedding, and it helped that I took everyone’s phones away,” Hudgens told Vogue. “It was amazing because at the dinner, I would look around and everyone was talking to each other—our family and friend groups coming together and creating real relationships that I know they’re going to invest real time into. Seeing that and bringing everyone together and celebrating us, it was just so magical.”