Hard Rock woke up loud in the best way Pacific light bouncing off stone, a breeze already keeping time like a metronome. From the first hour it was obvious: this one would run on music and joy. There were about two hundred guests and the hotel seemed to grow a bigger heart to hold them all.
Día 1 — Bienvenida & Sangeet
The welcome evening tipped straight into celebration. Families met mid-song; friends arrived dancing. The sangeet found its rhythm fast one chorus folding into the next until no one remembered where the playlist started. Sequins made their own constellations; shoes were optional; laughter moved in waves across the terrace. I kept catching the small tells: a cousin fixing a dupatta on the run, someone’s uncle perfecting a shoulder shimmy, Casey’s grin turning into a full-body yes whenever she drifted near Vijay.
Día 2 — Mañana de color
Morning smelled like citrus and marigold. Haldi brightened hands and forearms; mehndi mapped quiet stories along wrists. The light was honest direct, Cabo-clear and it made every hue ring a little louder. I worked close to windows and shade, letting breath and camera slow down around the details: turmeric caught in a bracelet; laughter that wouldn’t sit still for a portrait; a mother’s palm hovering, then landing, then staying.
Día 3 — Baraat, Mandap, Fiesta
By afternoon the baraat was its own weather system dhols and cheers and a crowd that moved like a single, delighted animal. Vijay appeared inside that sound with the sort of joy that photographs don’t have to chase; they just stand there and receive. Casey, American; Vijay, Hindu; together they felt like two languages choosing the same word.
The ceremony faced the ocean. The mandap breathed with the breeze, flowers lifting and settling as if nodding along. Agni held its quiet spine of flame while vows threaded the air. There was a moment right before the garlands when both of them looked up at the horizon and then back at each other, and the frame softened around them as if the day had decided to agree. The kiss was brief and complete. The crowd answered like surf elegant and uncontained.
Night didn’t arrive so much as deepen. Black tie met bright saris; tuxedo jackets learned new steps; the dance floor became a warm current no one wanted to swim out of. I worked the edges and the heart: fingers tapping a glass stem in time, a grandparent clapping on two and four and outlasting the twenty-somethings, Casey’s hand finding Vijay’s shoulder and staying there, steady as a promise. We laughed a lot. “La pasamos cabrón” is exactly right; I had to remind myself to keep shooting because the room kept trying to turn me into a dancer.
For the last frame, I set them where the pool holds a second sky and the Pacific throws a silver line beyond it. “Hold,” I said, and they did foreheads close, shoulders easy, the music still vibrating in their posture. Click. The night kept singing even as the lights came up, and I walked away with ears ringing, heart full, and salt in the seams of my cameras the good kind that says a celebration lived up to its name.
