We crossed the sky in a small private plane, the world pressed into soft folds beneath the wing. When the wheels touched down, the air felt greener somehow volcanic, old, generous. The hacienda waited at the end of a country road, all dark stone and arches, courtyards stitched with bougainvillea and the hush of tall doors. It already felt like a story that had begun before we arrived.
Amber and Miguel had come from Canada to marry here her first wedding, his second and there was a sweetness in the way their people moved through the place, kind in that effortless way that makes work feel like belonging. They put us in a small hotel nearby; I fell asleep to crickets and woke to birds that sounded like water.
Day 1 — Arrivals & Rehearsal Dinner
By afternoon the courtyard had learned everyone’s names. Luggage rumbled across tile, hands found other hands after too long apart. As the sun slid behind the colonnade, long tables bloomed under string lights candles doubling in the glazed tiles, laughter echoing off the walls and coming back warmer. Amber’s smile kept finding Miguel across the table, and he met it every time. I kept close to the small things: a thumb on a glass stem, a sister’s head on a shoulder, a breeze that picked up a napkin and tried to make off with it.
Day 2 — Globos al Amanecer
We left in the dark for an open field, thermoses in our pockets, the sky still undecided. At five a.m., the first burners roared to life, and color rose out of the earth bands of red and gold breathing into shape. They climbed into a basket together, cheeks lit by the flame, and the balloon lifted as if called by name. I photographed from the ground first silhouettes against the first blue then from another basket, the hacienda’s valley laid out like a map below us. Up there, the world turned slowly. She pressed her forehead to his, and the burner hissed, and the click felt like a kind of prayer.
Day 3 — The Wedding
The hacienda woke smelling of coffee and flowers. In a high-ceilinged room, Amber stood near a window while her stylist fixed what needed no fixing. She looked like someone the light had chosen elegant and easy, the dress falling in a line that made sense of every movement. Miguel dressed nearby, a quiet line in a bright morning. I thought about beginnings how they can happen more than once, how a second vow can feel like a deeper yes.
They married in the gardens, under the patient gaze of the volcano and a sky that had decided to be kind. Florals everywhere, but never loud petals like breath along the aisle, color braided into green. Parents watched like anchors: attentive, present, holding the room steady while the vows unfolded. When the kiss landed the courtyard returned it with a cheer that felt handmade.
Night found us back under the arches with music bouncing off stone. The kind guests who had been gentle all weekend turned gleeful dancing became a language even the walls remembered. I stole them away for one last frame by a column where the lantern light went soft. “Hold,” I said, and they did two silhouettes stitched to a place that had adopted them for three days. Click.
On the drive back to the little hotel, the road was empty and the fields were dark and alive. I could still feel the balloon’s slow turning in my body, the courtyard’s echo in my ears, and their steadiness at the center of it all. Some weddings announce themselves; this one simply gathered us in and kept us there.
