First day


Last week I had the pleasure of going down to Guadalajara,
Mexico to shoot Annie and Jose’s Wedding/Graduation Celebration/Thanksgiving
Love Fest.
 Annie is an American girl from the northwest going to Medical School
at the University of Guadalajara, where she met Jose, a native of the city.
This trip was so great! When most people think of a wedding in Mexico, they
think warm sandy beaches and beautiful resorts, but Guadalajara has neither
beaches nor fancy resorts. It was “real” Mexico. And it was so fun to see and
experience.
The trip started off with a red eye flight from PDX at 9pm the
night after Thanksgiving. We landed in GDL at 5:00am, cleared customs and hoped
in a cab. The only directions I had was an email Annie had sent me in Spanish
that I showed to the driver on my iPhone. It was still dark outside, we drove
around for 40 minutes and finally he stops in what looks like an industrial
back alley and says “aqui, aqui” and we get out. Uh…I’m really hoping this is
the right place and I knock on what I think is the
door…and out pops Annie, with a bubbly “buenos dias!” Whew! we made it! We
walked into the house and it was gorgeous, everything remodeled and super nice.
A really cool backyard garden and super sweet decor. Never judge a book by its
cover!
Jenn and I were dead tired so we laid down for a couple of
hours and caught up on some sleep, when we woke up, Jose took us for a little
tour of the barrio (neighborhood) and we went to a really cool market where you
could order all kinds of food and juices and random stuff. The photo will kind
of give you an idea of the area. This looks like an alley, but its actually a
main road, a very busy road. Crazy. I had something delicious, but I have no
idea what it was. We were the only Gringo’s for miles and my Spanish is, well,
lets just say I needed Jordyn’s Dora the Explorer book in a bad way.
After hitting up the market, we loaded up and headed out to
a nearby lake and this cool little water park where the pools where filled with
water from a natural hot springs in the same location.
The day was pretty chill. Hanging by the pool, eating,
singing…I love that in Mexico, people just break out into song and dance and
bring instruments with them everywhere. Very cool vibe.Finally, it got dark and we headed to our hotel and got some
much needed sleep.

Next day

The next day was the wedding. We got up early and headed
back over to Annie’s house and walked down to a hair place so her nieces could
get some cool hairdo’s. This was the outside. I loved how the chairs were lined
up for the kids.
On the way back we walked past some folks selling shirts in
front of their house.
Finally, we arrived at the ceremony location. My good friend and fellow Tiffany Brown is very good friends with Annie and has been following and documenting her life for over 15 years. Check her blog recent blog posts about Annie’s pregnancy and delivery, some ridiculously awesome photography by T. Brown. Anyway, so Tiff had a bunch of prints made up from all of her time spent with Annie and Jose and tied them to the trees leading up to the ceremony.

Jose was a bit nervous leading up to the event, but this was
no regular ceremony. They started off with a magician to entertain the crowd.
Everything was in Spanish and I didn’t really understand a lick of what he was
saying, but it was still a great show and I laughed a lot.
Their daughter Elena wasn’t going
to let anybody else hold her during the ceremony, so she stood up there with
them as well.
After the vows, Annie and Jose
and their son Panzon performed some capoeira, which was really awesome. They
are damn good!
Then the reception, as if a magician and
capoeira wasn’t cool enough, they had a 20 piece mariachi band, a belly dancer,
then a samba band and samba dancers