Mario & Keith

Villa La Mansión sits on the hillside above Banderas Bay, with a terrace that runs the whole length of the house and palms on either side. From the tables you see the water, the town, and the mountains behind it. There is no wall between the ceremony and the sea.

Mario and Keith married there on a Friday in May, in front of everyone they love, in more colour than I have ever photographed at a wedding.

Two grooms, one terrace, and a great deal of colour

One in pale blue, one in sage green. Birds of paradise at the lapel — the same flower, on both of them. Their guests arrived in pink, orange, emerald, and every tropical print available. Nobody had asked them to. They simply did it, all of them, at once.

They were married under heliconia and ginger, with the bay behind and palm shadows moving across the whole gathering. Halfway through the vows one of them put a hand over his mouth and left it there.

After the vows

Long tables in deep blue, the light going down over the water, string lights coming on one by one. At some point they sat down together on a bench at the edge of the terrace, alone for the first time all day, and neither of them said anything for a while. That is usually my favourite photograph of a wedding, and it was this time too.

Venue: Villa La Mansión, Puerto Vallarta · Photography & film: Julien Leveau

LGBTQ+ weddings in Puerto Vallarta

Vallarta celebrates same-sex weddings like nowhere else in Mexico, and I have been photographing them here since the day they became legal. Days like this one are the reason I keep saying yes.