A Vibrant Multicultural Destination Wedding at Playa Fiesta Hotel in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Mariecar Frias and Jason Sharma’s winter wedding in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico was a celebration of color and their Filipino and Indian heritage. “We chose to do a destination wedding because as much as it was our wedding, we wanted everyone to feel like they were on vacation too!” Mariecar says. “Playa Fiesta was a perfect choice because we had the entire place to ourselves and our favorite people for five days. It was important to us that the wedding feel private and intimate.” The weekend-long event featured two ceremonies, both a traditional Hindu ceremony and a more understated Western one. First, the couple transformed the waterfront pavilion into a showstopping mandap. Panels of red and cream fabric adorned the structure’s wood columns, and arrangements of roses, matthiola, lilies, mini mums, snapdragons and gladiolus in brilliant shades of red, pink, fuchsia and orange. Jason arrived in style on a white horse as part of the traditional baraat. For the Western ceremony, fuchsia flower petals were scattered down the aisle, and the pair incorporated two Filipino Catholic traditions: a veil ceremony and a cord ceremony. “Since we were in Mexico, we also wanted to honor local traditions, so after we kissed, we walked down the aisle to a mariachi band playing,” Mariecar says. “One of my favorite pictures from that day is us kissing next to the mariachi band with the ocean as the backdrop.” Other nods to the locale included colorful, authentic Mexican tiles that were gifted to guests as favors, spicy mango margaritas and customized maracas placed at each table that read “Shake for a kiss!”