The Story
Sarah and James had been planning this wedding for nearly two years by the time it arrived. They'd looked at venues across Mexico, Costa Rica, and the Caribbean before settling on Garza Blanca — and when you see these photographs, you'll understand why no other place made sense.
Garza Blanca Preserve Resort & Spa sits on a private stretch of beach about twenty minutes south of Puerto Vallarta. The hotel is built into the cliffside above the beach, all white concrete and glass, but the beach itself is pure — white sand, warm water, the Sierra Madres rising behind it. In January, the light here is faultless.
Sarah spent the morning in one of the overwater suites with her three sisters and her mother. James was in the main building with his brother and his father, who had flown in from Edinburgh. By late afternoon, the two parties were still on opposite sides of the property when I arrived, and I moved between them for an hour before the ceremony.
The ceremony was on the beach at 5pm. The timing was precise: the sun was low but not yet at the horizon, the shadows were long, and the light on the water was gold and moving. James watched Sarah walk toward him from eighty feet away, and his face from that distance told me everything I needed to know about where to be.
After the ceremony, we worked quickly. Garza Blanca's beach curves slightly, which means there are angles where you can isolate a couple completely from the resort infrastructure — just them, the sand, the mountains, the water. We found all of those angles in forty-five minutes, then joined the guests for dinner.
The reception was set directly on the beach, tables in the sand, torches lit as darkness came. Dancing started before dinner was over. Sarah and James's first dance was to a song I'd heard at another wedding here, years ago — and it hit the same way both times. That kind of music, in that kind of light, on a beach like that, while two people who love each other move together — there is nothing harder to photograph and nothing more rewarding when you get it right.