Ross Stovall Photography We're Married! - Ross Stovall Photography

We’re Married!

Posted by Ross Stovall on Apr 6, 2011 in Blog, Mine | 2 Comments

Over March Chau and I finally got married! We had our wedding in beautiful Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. The way we chose Playa Del Carmen as our destination was a little reckless however. We had never been to Playa so we completely went into this blindly. We decided to do a destination wedding after looking at a few places around the Bay Area and not being satisfied with any venues that could hold a large crowd. Coming from Vietnamese families our guest list was getting out of hand and we quickly realized if we had our wedding in the Bay we wouldn’t be able to do it how we wanted. So we decided to make it a destination wedding. Being into photography I had been following Matt Adcock and Sol Tamargo from Del Sol Photography for quite a bit of time. Matt’s old Flash Flavor blog was actually one of the first photography blogs that I followed. I had always marveled at their beautiful pictures in gorgeous Playa Del Carmen. I decided to show Chau their pictures and she was sold right then and there. From that point on it was Playa Del Carmen or bust! Of course the very first thing I did when we decided to do this was to book Matt =]. Luckily he was available for our date and the plans all came together from there. We even decided to book an underwater cenote trash the dress shoot with him and Sol (which was a ton of fun!)!

Not ever having been to Playa we knew we had to book a good wedding planner. Luckily we found a GREAT one in Erica Bressan from Weddings in Playa. I have to confess that Chau took over much of the planning from here however. She coordinated with Erica about everything, from the rehearsal to applying for the actual Mexico wedding license to the actual wedding. When we arrived in Playa I was very impressed with Erica and was confident that everything was going to go according to plan. We highly recommend her!

Our official guest count was 52 total guests which far exceeded our expectations. We were pleasantly surprised and grateful that we have so many great friends and family who wanted to celebrate with us. We arrived 6 days before the wedding so we could handle all the legal issues involved with getting hitched in Mexico. Our friends and family trickled in before and after us.

Playa was better than even we had hoped for! The weather was perfect and we were pleasantly surprised by how walkable the city was. We’re not resort people so this was right up our alley as we much more enjoy being able to walk around a city and get lost in it than hang around a resort all day. Playa was perfect for this and was loads of fun walking around with all our friends. Every day was a blast! Whether it was 40 of us completely filling up a restaurant and walking to Blue Parrot for dancing and drinking on the beach or all of us filling up our friend’s amazing 4 story penthouse condo for a low key bbq night before the wedding, every day and night was unique and a great time. We enjoyed every second and still miss Playa and all our friends now! The entire trip was truly a once in a lifetime experience.

Our wedding day went perfectly thanks to Erica and the Del Sol team which consisted of Matt, Juan, and Melissa. Our ceremony was at a private beach at Playacar Fase 1 since we wanted a beach that wasn’t very crowded. As luck would have it we were actually the only wedding on that beach that day. After the ceremony and champagne we headed over to Kool Beach Club for our reception. The reception went great and we had a ton of fun (and a lot of tequila)! We really enjoyed getting crazy with all our family and friends, I even took a couple leaps in the pool! We danced the night away next to the beach to 6 hours of open bar which seemed to go by in an instance. Matt from Del Sol was fantastic as well, he had so much energy. He was all over the place but always out of the way, the perfect photojournalist. Definitely the best wedding photographer I’ve ever seen in action. I can’t wait to see the pictures he got!

On a side note this trip I got to thoroughly use some new camera gear that I had been piling up over the past year. As always I brought along my 5Dm2 but this time I left all my Canon lenses at home. I took with me my converted Zeiss Contax Vario-Sonnar N24-85 f3.5-4.5, Zeiss Rollei Distagon 35mm f1.4, and Olympus OM Zuiko 18mm f3.5. All three performed great however my beloved Zeiss 35 seized up on the 7th day which I guess is what I get for using a 50 year old lens on the beach. My workhorses were the 24-85 and the 35 and both performed great. The 35 in particular is a beautiful lens. I really enjoy the close focusing capabilities of this lens at this focal length. The drawing style I also find unique as this is the only lens I have that looks like it. I’m continually amazed by its performance. I was really bummed when it stopped working on me mid trip.

Anyways here are some of my favorite pictures from the trip, obviously I don’t have any from the actual wedding day =]…

First margarita of the trip!

Las Cazuelas, really good croquets and paella here!

Karta bar for some hookah and drinks.

Chau ended up having a little too much tequila here and took a dip (fell) in the ocean =].

We completely filled up this restaurant.

This was really good! The sausages were especially delicious!

The morning after the wedding and still drinking!

My little sister and Chau walking down 5th Ave. All our condos were to the left of here.

The El Taj Condos. Our room was to the left of the small pool with the massage chairs.

One of the last shots before my 35 crapped out. I was really sad to lose it for the remainder of the trip. This lens is so amazing, just look at those lobsters!

This place was TERRIBLE. We popped in after Karta Bar was to full for us and we were met with bad drinks, overly loud music, and USED mouth pieces. Gross!! We left real quick. This was taken with my Olympus 18mm. Look at how little distortion there is for a super wide! Pretty awesome!