Some weddings I witness; this one I carried in my chest. Jax is my best friend my sister in all but blood and my partner in Mezcal MUSA. To photograph her at Puerto Raiz, our place, felt like standing inside a promise we’ve been making to each other for years: that love and work and land can line up, and when they do, the light knows.
Morning broke warm over the mezquites. Dust lifted from the paths like a soft prayer, and the adobe held the night’s cool a little longer than it should. I found Jax in a room I know by heart, the window throwing a clean stripe of sun across the floor. She didn’t try to be beautiful; she just was calm, bright, the kind of steady joy that doesn’t need volume. Adrian got ready a few doors down, all open grin and nerves he wouldn’t admit to. I moved between them careful as breath, letting the land’s hush set the tempo.
Puerto Raiz has a way of hosting without fuss. Long tables waited under the trees. Clay, linen, and hand-blown glass scattered light in small, kind ways. Our friends padded in and out with that easy familiarity of people who know where the matches live and which way the wind leans. Someone set out the copitas; someone laughed in the kitchen; somewhere a guitar found four quiet chords and decided to stay. It felt less like building a wedding and more like waking one.
They married beneath the open sky. The breeze came honest, lifting the edge of a veil, pooling sweetness in the flowers, asking for nothing but attention. When Jax arrived at the aisle my hands shook not from doubt, but from the simple ache of loving her so much. I breathed with the shutter and let the frame hold me steady. Adrian’s face softened the moment he saw her, the kind of soft that collapses distance and time. Vows came low and true. Their yes was the yes of people who already live it.
We walked the orchard path for portraits, the dirt turning to shimmer where the sun touched it. Jax leaned the way only she can shoulder first, then smile, then everything else and Adrian stepped into that space like it had always been his. I kept things simple: horizon lines, a hand catching another hand, laughter that didn’t need direction. When they paused, I saw the day organize itself around them mesquite shadows, bright earth, a sky that had decided to be generous.
At sunset the place turned gold and then honey and then that last, unnameable color we chase and never own. We poured mezcal our mezcal and raised it to land and love and the long work of both. The copitas clicked like a small flock of birds. Jax and I looked at each other over the rim and tried not to cry, failing exactly as much as we were meant to.
Dinner opened to the night with no panic, just appetite. Candles stitched the tables together. The food tasted like the soil knows our names. Speeches came from people who have carried us through storms; they landed soft and right. When the music took the courtyard, it wasn’t performance it was belonging. Kids chased shadows; elders found chairs with good sightlines; friends folded into each other’s pockets and let the warmth do the rest.
I stole them for one more photograph beside the bar, where the bottles caught starlight like a second constellation. “Hold,” I said, and they did foreheads close, her breath steadying his, his hand easy at her back. Click. The crickets kept time. The candles leaned. Home said yes.
I’ve never believed more in what a place can do. Puerto Raiz didn’t dress up; it listened. It let the wind write on linen and the light write on skin and two people write on each other. When I packed my cameras, the night was still speaking low, certain, full. I love them. I love us. And I love that the land we built with our hands held them exactly the way they deserve to be held.
