Jackie and JJ asked guests to pack tuxedos and colorful formalwear for a wedding weekend by the Caribbean, then filled the celebration with coral, peach, yellow, and pink flowers, sweeping white drapery, and plenty of reasons to stay on the dance floor. At Garza Blanca Cancún, their “Black Tie by the Beach” idea landed somewhere between a formal evening out and a very good vacation.

The details that guests took home with them were just as personal. Jackie and JJ wrote a letter to every person attending, Jackie edited nearly six years of one-second-a-day videos into a film for the reception, and the couple spent the months before the wedding practicing a first dance complete with three lifts.

What We Love About This Wedding

• Handwritten letters for every guest that doubled as escort cards on an “Our Favorite People” display
• Nearly six years of Jackie’s one-second-a-day videos edited into a film for the reception
• Three lifts worked into Jackie and JJ’s choreographed first dance
• A table dash that had every group inventing a pose on the spot
• A farewell party with repurposed wedding flowers, conchas, ice cream, piñatas, sparklers, and fireworks

Featured Vendor:
Pride Maya Weddings

Keeping The Entire Wedding Weekend In One Place Made Things Easier

Jackie and JJ met in 2017 as recent college graduates beginning their careers at Goldman Sachs. They became close quickly, then spent the next eight years building careers, traveling, and moving through adulthood together. There was no single moment when marriage suddenly made sense. By the time they got engaged in 2024, it was simply the next step in a life they had already spent years sharing.

Rather than gathering everyone for a single day, they pictured taking “the trip of a lifetime with all of our favorite people.” Garza Blanca Cancún gave them a way to make that happen without asking guests to constantly travel between venues. Everyone could stay at the resort, join the scheduled celebrations, then head to the pool, beach, or their rooms whenever they wanted.
The weekend began with drinks on the resort rooftop. After the wedding, everyone reconvened on the beach before another party that evening, this time with more speeches, piñatas, ice cream and conchas, sparklers, and fireworks. Jackie and JJ even reused their wedding flowers for the final night.

“The farewell party was actually one of the most fun parts of the entire weekend,” they shared. With the wedding-day nerves gone, they could simply hang out with everyone who had made the trip. 

A Detailed Mood Board Made Destination Planning Easier

Jackie describes herself as “admittedly very Type A,” and she stayed closely involved in the creative decisions. She built a detailed mood board using inspiration from Pinterest, Instagram, and wedding publications, bringing together the colors, textures, flowers, fashion, and atmosphere before they started making smaller choices.

That visual reference also gave their vendors something concrete to work from. Jackie and JJ researched weddings in Cancún and Mexico City, found vendors through Instagram and recommendations from their planning team, and compared portfolios and pricing before booking. Their photographer and videographer came from Mexico City, while most of the remaining team was based locally in Cancún.

For a destination wedding with plenty of logistics happening from afar, communication mattered as much as the portfolios. Their planning team, including Lorenzo and Emily of Pride Maya Weddings, helped manage the practical side while Jackie remained hands-on with the design. The couple credits their planners’ responsiveness with making decisions and concerns much easier to navigate from a distance.

Saving Their Most Personal Vows For Just The Two Of Them

Before the public vows and petal cannon came a much quieter exchange. Jackie and JJ did a first look followed by private vows, with their photographer arranging the timing so JJ wouldn’t know exactly when Jackie was approaching.

They also exchanged gifts with their parents, giving their mothers matching diamond necklaces and JJ’s father a Louis Vuitton wallet. After the ceremony, they headed to the beach for photographs before joining cocktail hour. Later, they made sure their guests got into the photo collection too, first with one large group portrait and then with a table dash during the reception. Each table had to invent its own pose, producing some of the couple’s funniest images from the day.

Their wedding-day clothes accounted for the setting as well. JJ wore a custom tuxedo made during a trip to Bali the previous year. Jackie chose a fitted lace gown with an open back after deciding the larger dresses she had tried were simply too heavy for a warm beachfront ceremony.

For the reception, she switched into a sparkling Meshki dress with no train, partly because it made their choreographed dance easier and partly, as she admits, because she wanted an excuse to wear something sparkly. Bridesmaids chose their own silhouettes in a mix of blush and yellow florals, while the groomsmen wore tuxedos in styles of their choosing.

Mixing Black-Tie Style With Colorful Tropical Details

Jackie initially pictured an all-white wedding. Once they had the venue, that idea started to change. Against the ocean and palm trees, coral, peach, blush, orange, yellow, and ivory made more sense, with greenery keeping the arrangements loose and garden-inspired.

The contrast became central to their “Black Tie by the Beach” concept. Guests dressed formally, but women were encouraged to wear color, while the men added playful ties and pocket squares to tuxedos and suits. At the ceremony, colorful ground florals framed Jackie and JJ, with more flowers lining a clean white aisle. A flower-petal cannon sent white petals into the air immediately after they said “I do.”

For the reception at Garza Blanca Cancún, natural wood tables and chairs, white linens, glass candleholders, and orange candles continued the mix. Overhead, large sections of white drapery added movement and scale without competing with the colorful flowers.

Drapery was one of the couple’s biggest decor investments, and the decision tied directly into another priority: photography and video. “We joked that there was no point in investing so much in beautiful photographs and videos if we did not also create a beautiful setting for them!”

Turning Escort Cards Into Personal Notes For Every Guest

Among all the decor at Garza Blanca Cancún, one of the most talked-about displays was also one of the simplest. Jackie and JJ wrote a handwritten letter to every guest explaining what that person had meant to them over the years.

The envelopes doubled as escort cards and hung on a colorful wall labeled “Our Favorite People.” Guests found their seating assignments along with messages written specifically for them.

“There were tears, laughter, and so many heartfelt reactions,” the couple says. “Every word came from the heart.”

The idea carried through to the reception in a different form. Since 2020, Jackie had recorded a one-second video almost every day, collecting clips of trips and major milestones alongside dinner parties, movie nights, and ordinary days at home. For the wedding, she finally assembled almost six years of footage into one film set to Bad Bunny’s “DTMF.” Some clips even captured the first time they met people who were now sitting in the room watching it.

Turning Dance Lessons Into Date Nights Before The Wedding

Jackie and JJ took dance lessons for months before the wedding, turning rehearsals into regular date nights. Their finished routine included three lifts, a choice Jackie explains with considerably less seriousness than the preparation probably required. “Jackie joked that she was not the strongest dancer, so if she spent enough time in the air, no one would focus on her actual dancing.”

The crowd’s reaction suggests the strategy worked. Once the dance floor opened, lasers and a smoke machine joined the drapery overhead, and a churro cart arrived later in the evening. The reception ended with everyone forming a circle around Jackie and JJ for their final dance.

Not every planned detail made it into the night. Sparklers were supposed to fire during the biggest lift but never went off. Jackie also forgot to give the planner a linen memorial sign she had made for a front-row chair. Nobody knew either element was missing. That became its own lesson. “Our guests did not know they were supposed to happen, so no one noticed that anything was missing.”

Choosing Their Priorities Early Made Budget Decisions Easier

Photography, videography, content creation, and decor received a significant portion of Jackie and JJ’s budget because those were the things they cared about most. They saved elsewhere, including by using digital save-the-dates and designing their invitations, menus, and place cards themselves. For couples sorting through the seemingly endless possibilities that come with planning, their advice is to establish those priorities before everything else starts competing for attention.

“Decide which parts of the wedding matter most to both of you, and let those priorities guide your budget and decisions. There will always be more details you could add, but not every element will have the same impact.”

By the time their weekend at Garza Blanca Cancún was underway, the small things that went differently from the plan hardly registered. Their friends and family were already there, letters in hand, dancing, posing for ridiculous table-dash photos, and settling in for another day together by the beach.