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My husband's family actually owns and runs a printing business in Mexico, so finding a printer was easy! They created all of the printed materials for our festivities. Since wedding invites are hand-delivered in Mexico City, they are typically very large, so we decided to bring that tradition to the U.S. and then wax sealed them with our monogram.
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I knew I would get flustered having a ton of people get ready with me, so I decided just to have my cousin, aunt, and mom. I ordered the pajamas off Amazon Fashion—who doesn't love free two-day shipping??—and had them monogrammed in Austin.
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My shoes were Badgley Mischka and incredibly comfortable, highly recommend the block heel for any bride on the fence about her shoes. I wore them to all my bridal showers to break them in and then around the house with socks on the week before the wedding, so they were uber comfortable. They felt like old, reliable friends by my wedding day.
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We got ready at the Hilton in Polanco in Mexico City. It was a rainy day (which is good luck!) that provided great lighting for our pre-wedding photos.
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I wanted to have the flowers from my wedding in a headpiece for after the ceremony, so my florist created this the morning of the wedding for when I was ready to ditch the veil for the dance floor.
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I was maid of honor in my aunt's wedding, and she was matron of honor at my wedding. This exact picture of my mom, aunt, and me was taken at my aunt's wedding over fifteen years ago, so we re-created it on the day of my wedding.
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The color scheme at the wedding reception had dark blues and lush pinks, so I wanted to throw guests off the scent by having very traditional white wedding flowers for the ceremony. Mission accomplished.
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In Mexico, it's not tradition to have bridesmaids, so I didn't have any, but I did have close friends that I wanted to do a "first look" with and snap some photos with before the ceremony. This is the moment that they saw me in the dress for the first time. I'm usually a jeans gal, so I think you can tell from their expressions that they were not expecting to see me in a ballgown.
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We took photos at the wedding venue beforehand, and we didn't realize it at the time, but the pink walls of the building turned out to be a perfect backdrop for everyone's red dresses.
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I asked our photographer for as many candid shots as possible. This was between takes and a lot of these natural photos ended up being my favorite at the end of the day.
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I got my veil made at a local bridal boutique in Austin, but I was able to get a swatch of my Monique Lhuillier dress's lace mailed to me, so I could have the veil match the dress. You could never tell the difference.
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My mom had custom tux slippers made for the men in the family with our custom wedding logo. The entire wedding was really designed to be a mix of American and Mexican wedding traditions and bringing our families from two different countries together, so I wanted to make sure that was reflected in the logo. In Spanish, Mexico City is abbreviated as CDMX, and our names start with the letters "D" and "C," so we took advantage of the overlap.
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This was the moment right after I had my first look with my dad, and my brother saw me for the first time—one of my favorite moments of the day. It's tradition for men to wear tails at night weddings in Mexico, and I think the guys loved an excuse to dress up.
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This was right after our first look and ended up being our Christmas card. Two-fo- one special.
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We were lucky that the wedding venue had both the chapel and area for the reception. The church was built in the 1750s and is absolutely stunning. The only decoration we really brought in was some greenery and the candelabras. As you'll see, the venue really did the rest of the work all on its own.
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I think my veil had to be 17-feet long to be longer than my dress.
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We did a full Catholic mass in Spanish—I converted for the wedding—and had a full orchestra up top. Although many of the guests couldn't understand what the priest was saying, I think the magic of the ambiance transcended any language barrier.
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This was right after we exchanged rings—think he was kissing it for good luck. Another perk of a full Catholic mass—you get to sit most of the ceremony.
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This was right after the ceremony. I think they caught me mid-run to grab a glass of champagne.
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Our flower girls and altar boys were the hit of the wedding. My husband's aunt owns a dressmaking business that makes flower girl dresses, so she custom-designed them and the flower crowns for our wedding. It was another great way to keep it in the family!
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If you are anything like me and feel extremely awkward taking solo photos, I highly recommend a photographer that first and foremost makes you feel relaxed. Mine did an incredible job and was incredibly swift.
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The family! I have no sisters and my husband has no brothers, so we were both very excited to be gaining new siblings.
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The photographer kept telling the guys to put their hands in their pockets, which I thought was so funny at the time. Turns out, it looks great in photos.
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My "something borrowed" were my pearl earrings. My best friend wore them to her wedding and lent them to me for mine.
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The reception! My wedding planner, Diego del Rio, completely transformed this room for us. They tented the top with black draping to make it look like the night sky and give the DJ better acoustics. I also wanted to mix up the tables, so they were all different sizes and didn't look uniform.
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I wanted them to put as much greenery into that room as possible, so it felt like A Midsummer Night's Dream.
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The planners knocked it out of the park with the table settings. They used Dolce & Gabbana gold silverware at every table.
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It's Mexican tradition for the family to sit at an elevated table facing all the guests, which reminded me of Game of Thrones, so my planner started calling it the Game of Thrones table. They had open cut fresh fruit at every table to really round out the feeling like we were at a feast.
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I asked our florist to mix as many types of flowers as possible, so it looked organic. Since we were based in the U.S., I wasn't able to ever take a look at the flowers before the big day, but she knocked it out of the park—trust your wedding vendors!
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In Mexico, smoking is still very common and almost all wedding venues allow you to smoke indoors. I knew the second the tequila started flowing that there would be plenty of Americans wanting to smoke a social cigarette or two, so we had little cigarette cases at everybody's table settings.
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I know weddings are rarely known for their food, but our caterer was truly Michelin-star-worthy. We alternated appetizers at each table so everybody could try them. This was the incredible tuna tartare with mango and soy sauce to pour.
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Raspberry with jicama—I still don't know how they managed to have this level of presentation for more than 700 place settings.
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Our wedding planner custom-made our dance floor design and incorporated it on everything—the cigarette boxes, the bathroom stalls, the menus, the table numbers, everything. It was a really nice way to tie the whole event together. We had about 750 guests attend, so we made sure our planner got the XXXL sized dance floor.
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Another Mexican wedding tradition I hope to bring back to the U.S. is to have the first dance after dinner. That way everybody is well fed, has some drinks in them, and is ready to hit the dance floor, as soon as the first dances are over. We danced to Leon Bridges's "Beyond."
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Yet another Mexican wedding tradition I love is the groom spinning the bride around during the first dance with sparklers flying in the background. They do it at every wedding, and I felt like Beyoncé.
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Oh, and it makes the photos look incredible.
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Like I said, I am not really a ballgown girl, so as soon as the reception started, I changed into wedged converse sneakers, so I could dance until 6:00 a.m. 10/10 would recommend.
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One of the most common pieces of advice we got was to take a second away from the reception to just look out at your guests and see how much fun they're having. 10/10 would recommend.
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Probably my favorite Mexican wedding tradition that I hope to bring back to the U.S.—sippy cups for the reception. We had two bars on the dance floor and didn't want it to become a slippery, sludgy mess, so our wedding planner had sippy cups with our wedding logo. You could dance and drink all night without splling a drop.
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We had a frozen Magnum bar, where you could dip the chocolate into any topping. There were some chocolate-covered faces on the dance floor by the end of the night.
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We also had a full ice cream bar next to the dance floor. I was a huge fan of Marble Slab Creamery growing up, so our planner surprised us with this at the reception.
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My dad and I didn't want to do a slow dance for our first dance because we knew one of us would end up in tears, so we decided to start with "My Girl" and then have the DJ record scratch and switch to "Groove Line." It was way more on-brand for the two of us.
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Another Mexican wedding tradition to bring back to the States—before the bouquet toss, the bride and groom stand on chairs in the middle of the dance floor, and the groom is given a fifth of tequila. Guests line up for shots, and the groom pours it everybody's mouths. The bride can only toss the bouquet once the bottle is empty
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The bouquet toss was one of the few wedding traditions I really wanted to do, and it was a blast. I would highly recommend.
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Mexican weddings go all night—ours ended at 6:00 a.m.—so there are lots of food stations throughout the evening to keep people fueled. This was the charcuterie station set up at about 2:00 a.m.
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Our wedding was the weekend before Dia de los Muertos in Mexico City. I will be honest though, I have no idea where my friend found that mask. It got passed around the dance floor all night.
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When a wedding goes 12 hours, you know that your feet are going to get tired, so our planner went all-out with custom-made spa slippers. They were so comfortable—even the guys took off their tux shoes to wear them.
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Our planner covered all the bathroom stalls with our custom design from the dance floor and our wedding logos, which was another great touch to tie everything together.
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As you can see, they were a hit.
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My dad conspired with our wedding planner behind my back to surprise us with confetti at 2:00 a.m.—it was unbelievable. Little did we know that at 4:00 a.m., the confetti would drop again. The guests went absolutely wild.
