A Three-Day Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos Wedding
There is a particular hour in April when Los Cabos softens. The wind drops at dusk, the cliffs hold their warmth, and the Sea of Cortez turns the color of pewter. It is the hour Kaylee and Matt chose for their Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos wedding, and the one our team built three days of celebration around.
They came to us wanting a weekend that moved. A welcome dinner that lived inside Cabo’s old soul. A wedding day that opened like a room of candlelight and closed with the sound of mariachi. A farewell that felt closer to a Sunday than to a goodbye. We anchored the weekend at Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos, the resort our studio has worked alongside for years, and built outward from there.
Kaylee and Matt arrived with a clarity that is rare and a sense of humor that is rarer. Matt, who goes by Fish, brought the easy warmth of someone everyone seems to know already. Kaylee brought the eye. She wanted a wedding that felt confident without ever feeling overdressed: black and emerald and white, candles instead of chandeliers, no wedding-day palette that announced itself as one.
They were equally clear about what they did not want. No first look. No phones at the ceremony. No script that left no room for surprise. They wanted family at the center of every moment, and the processional we built reflected that, with stepparents escorted, siblings walking together, and the groom’s father stepping into a role I will return to.
A Welcome Dinner at Casa Martin
The weekend opened on a Thursday evening at Casa Martin Cabo San Lucas, a stone-walled restaurant we love for its old-Mediterranean ease. Ninety-four guests were met at the entrance with Kaylee’s Pink Drink, a signature the couple developed with the bar team, and a steady pour of icy Pacífico.
The first toast belonged to Kaylee’s mother, who set the tone for the weekend in a few sentences and then asked her daughter’s guests to sit. Dinner moved through three Mexican-inflected courses, family style where it counted: spinach salad and tuna tiradito to share, then short rib, totoaba sea bass, and chicken enchilada, finished with churros and a volcán de chocolate that disappeared faster than the speeches.
We arranged the speeches in three sets across the night, each capped at a few minutes, so that no one carried the room too long and the evening kept moving. By ten, the guests were on transportation back to the resort.
The Wedding Day at Waldorf Astoria
Friday began quietly. Blanc Bridal Salon set up in Kaylee’s suite at nine, and Neysa Quintana worked through the bridal party with the unhurried calm that, after twenty years in this industry, I still consider one of the great underrated luxuries of a Cabo wedding.
The design language was set months earlier, in-house at Karla Casillas & Co., with rentals brought to life by The Main Event Cabo and our long collaboration with Frania Logan. The palette stayed deliberately tight: ink-black plates, deep emerald velvet, brass candelabra at varied heights, and white calla lilies that we kept architectural rather than abundant. Louis chairs in cream softened the contrast. Candles, dozens and then hundreds of them, did the work of lighting.
We chose calla lilies because they hold their shape under candlelight in a way no garden flower does. By the time guests sat down for dinner, the room read closer to a private dining room in Milan than to a resort terrace in Mexico. That was the intent.
The ceremony was held at 4:30 in the Waldorf lobby, the open-air stretch where the resort’s stone and the Pacific light do most of the work without help. Pavan Productions, led by Luciano Pavan, took the music. They played guests in as the room filled, and the staff at our phone check station, set just inside the entrance, gathered devices for the duration. An unplugged ceremony is a gift a thoughtful couple gives to their own guests, and Kaylee and Matt were firm on it.
The processional moved in a careful order, each parent escorted, each role made visible. Kaylee walked last with her father to Alex Warren’s “Ordinary,” a song she had been quietly building the room toward since the first planning call.
And then the singular detail of the day. Matt’s father had been ordained for the occasion, and he wrote the ceremony himself. To stand in front of your son and his bride in front of every person they love, and to hold the ceremony together as the officiant, requires a steadiness not every parent could carry. He carried it. That moment was the kind we do not produce, only protect. It is the reason the room was unplugged.
A margarita was waiting for Kaylee the moment the recessional ended, which is, after twenty-plus years of these afternoons, one of my own quiet rituals as a planner.
A champagne girl met guests at the cocktail-hour entrance with sparkling wine and a smile that did not falter for sixty minutes. Pavan played on, then handed off to Mariachi Cabo, who appeared, as they always do, exactly when the room needed them. The mariachi led guests down the staircase to Don Manuel’s bar for the second half of cocktail hour. It is the kind of choreographed transition between two spaces that, when it works, feels as if the resort itself is moving with you.
Kaylee and Matt entered the reception down a staircase lined with candles on both treads, announced as the new Mr. and Mrs., and walked directly into their first dance. The Delilah Band, fronted by Ryan Cross, opened with Lady Gaga’s “Always Remember Us This Way.” They held the room for the rest of the night.
Dinner moved through three plated courses by the Waldorf banquet team. A beet salad. A choice of pineapple-glazed chicken, seared blue fin tuna, or beef tenderloin with juniper-berry demi-glace. Red velvet cake with mascarpone and strawberry sorbet to close the table.
The cake itself was a piece of design we are still thinking about. Three layers of strawberry pistachio, finished in soft white, with mini cakes baked individually for every guest in attendance. The cake cutting moved to the pool deck, and two minutes of fireworks followed. The dance floor opened the instant the last shell cleared the sky.
Romana Lilic of LA76 Photography led photography, with cinematography by William McNeills of McNeills Films, both moving through the night with the discretion that only comes from years of practice.
A Beach Club Farewell
Saturday was the wedding’s softest counterweight. We moved the remaining guests to the Waldorf Beach Club for what the couple had named, with their characteristic understatement, the Final Fiesta. The Main Event Cabo set the space in deliberate contrast to the night before: pink fringed beach umbrellas, blue Talavera centerpieces, eighty personalized pink towels stacked into a welcome tower, and a quiet supporting cast of flamingo inflatables that no one over thirty was too cool to touch.
DJ Jess held the music. A painter set up near the bar and worked through the afternoon, sending guests home with portraits. Build-your-own tacos opened at noon: skirt steak alambre, catch of the day a la talla, suckling pig carnitas, mushroom barbacoa. The bar ran until four.
It was the kind of farewell that does not announce itself as one. Guests drifted off in twos and threes, sun-warmed and quiet.
Three days, three settings. A welcome dinner in a stone courtyard. A reception lit almost entirely by candlelight. A Saturday at the beach club, soft enough to feel like a holiday extended by accident.
What set this weekend apart was not a single design decision or even a single moment, although the father-officiant will stay with me. It was the way Kaylee and Matt knew, before we ever started planning, which traditions to keep and which to gently set down. The unplugged ceremony. The margarita at the recessional. The mini cakes for every guest. The mariachi-led walk between bars.
Vendor Credits
A heartfelt thank you to the team who brought this weekend to life:
Planning & Event Styling: Karla Casillas & Co. Venue: Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos (Lucie Ortiz) Welcome Event Venue: Casa Martin Cabo San Lucas Photography: LA76 Photography (Romana Lilic) Videography: McNeills Films (William McNeills) Floral Design: Mareeh Botanica Event Rentals: The Main Event Cabo (Frania Logan) Catering: Waldorf Astoria Banquet Department (Leon García) Cake: Waldorf Astoria Fireworks: Coordinated in-house with Waldorf Astoria Ceremony & Cocktail Entertainment: Pavan Productions (Luciano Pavan), Mariachi Cabo (Leobardo Hernandez) Reception Live Band: Delilah Band (Ryan Cross) Farewell DJ: DJ Jess (Jessica Calderon) Audio/Visual Production: Trilogy Productions (Farid Becerra) Hair & Makeup: Blanc Bridal Salon (Neysa Quintana) Officiant: Steve Fishman, father of the groom Transportation: Transcabo (Itzel Alonso) Additional Entertainment: Cabo Inside, champagne girl and beach club painter
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