Lexee and Saurav took over Mar del Cabo, a boutique property on the Sea of Cortez in San José del Cabo, and ran all 48 of its suites as a private village for 120 guests across a full weekend. That choice sets the tone of their wedding, because a hotel with whitewashed arches and tiled roofs buried under bougainvillea already reads like Greece got raised in Mexico, and handing it to one guest list turns the architecture into a backdrop that belongs only to them.
Location: Los Cabos, Mexico
Style: Fusion, Vibrant, Intimate
Number of guests: 120
Setting: Oceanfront Boutique Hotel
Season: Spring
The story starts about as unromantically as it gets, with a group project. They were assigned to the same team in Business 101 during freshman year at the University of Illinois, and they spent the next five years proving the pairing right. Senior year almost split them up when Saurav took a job in the Bay Area, until Lexee’s best friend landed there for Teach For America and gave her a reason to follow, and the three of them rebuilt their lives in the same city.
Saurav proposed at the Shard in London, roughly a thousand feet over the city, during what Lexee thought was a quiet afternoon tea for four. Six of their closest friends had flown in and were waiting just out of sight, so the second she said yes, a private moment became a party at altitude.
Sangeet
The sangeet is the music night, the pre wedding party where both families dance for the couple, and they ran theirs on the beach so it could slide from golden hour cocktails into a full moon dance floor without anyone checking a schedule. They called it a backyard party with the Sea of Cortez standing in for the fence, and the performances backed that up, family and friends who clearly rehearsed for weeks.
Lexee wore fuchsia, a lehenga soaked in tonal pink embroidery from Ramuli Creations, and that shade is not a neutral pick. It is the exact saturated pink Pierpaolo Piccioli turned into an entire vocabulary at Valentino, the color that swallowed a whole fashion season. Saurav answered in soft lavender, which is the smart move, because a sangeet rewards a deliberate color clash over a matched set. String lights fanned off a single palm like a big top spun out of wire, the guests came in reds and blacks and prints, and the jewelry did the talking before anyone got close.
Baraat
The baraat is the groom’s procession, traditionally a ride to the ceremony on a decorated white horse called a ghodi while the baraatis dance him in, and Saurav did it in full, crossing the sand on horseback while the party moved around him.
The touch that makes it theirs is logistical, iced chai and Bombay sandwiches passed through the crowd during the procession, so the tradition stayed intact and nobody folded in the Baja heat. His ceremony sherwani worked quietly next to all that, ivory on ivory texture with layered pearl malas stacked to the sternum and a single gold brooch to break the strands.
The ceremony itself was Hindu, held on a grassy cliff over the Sea of Cortez, everything from the garland exchange to the walk around the fire built into a program the couple wrote to feel authentic and still move at a modern pace.
Lexee entered in the full grammar of a North Indian bride, a red lehenga heavy with gold zardozi, a nath chained from nose to ear, a matha patti across the hairline, and jhumkas built to swing, all of it custom from Ramuli with gold flown in from India. Her hair stayed low and plain with fresh blush roses tucked into the bun, which let the gold stay the loudest thing in frame. The wedding party moved in lavender on purpose, a cool border that pushed the red hotter at the center, everyone shaded by parasols against the cliff top sun.
For portraits the florals went feral. A white curved sofa dropped into a meadow of purple allium and cosmos and scabiosa reads closer to a Sofia Coppola pastoral than a symmetrical mandap, and staging it on a cliff over the water is the kind of swing that only lands when the flowers look this unbothered. The couple exited under falling marigold and rose petals, the part of a Hindu wedding that photographs like confetti and carries a great deal more weight.
Reception
Lexee reset the whole temperature for reception. Her reception dress from Grace Loves Lace was a bias cut satin slip with a cowl neckline, the exact lineage Carolyn Bessette made permanent and every minimalist bride has borrowed since, finished with her mother’s earrings and pearl bracelet from her own wedding and a pair of Loeffler Randall heels.
Saurav switched into a custom Daniel George tux. The bridesmaids landed the sharpest call of the night, a diluted rainbow of mismatched pastels in lilac and blush and chartreuse and sage that photographed like a box of macarons.
Kaitlyn Marie Photography caught the quieter counterweight too, the golden hour portraits on the sand where the day finally slowed to two people and a dip against the Baja light.
The cake was a straight retro revival, piped buttercream swags with strawberries spilling down the tiers, the couple’s own nod to the tiered cakes of the eighties and nineties done with intent this time. Then the saxophonist ambushed the floor mid set with a remix of RÜFÜS DU SOL’s Innerbloom, live brass over melodic house, which is about as current as wedding sound design gets right now, and the room went off.
The reception moved to the grand ballroom at the hotel’s sister property, where Lynette Dow Events gutted the room and rebuilt it until guests stopped believing they were in a hotel at all. The blueprint came straight from the couple, long communal tables lifted from the groom’s Harry Potter loyalty, Beauty and the Beast candelabras down the center, and warm light tuned to dim as the night got looser, with Monet named as the reason the room was meant to shift mood by the hour. The florals stayed disciplined and white here, ranunculus and lisianthus and tulips, since the color budget had already gone to the sangeet and the ceremony.
"A weekend of feeling endlessly blessed, surrounded by an incredible community of people we know love and encourage us in every way."
By 4 a.m. the reception had spilled into the pool, and that is where the buyout paid off, one small hotel that never emptied out, running on the same guest list from the first cocktail to the last swim.
Advice from the couple:
• Through this experience, we learned just how much love, patience, and teamwork go into creating something truly meaningful. It taught us to embrace the unexpected, trust the process, and lean on the people around us. Most of all, it reminded us that at the heart of every detail, what matters most is the joy of sharing it all with the people you love.
VENUE Mar del Cabo | PLANNING & DESIGN Lynette Dow Events, Ceci | PHOTOGRAPHER Kaitlyn Marie | VIDEOGRAPHY Apervision | CONTENT CREATION My Wedding Content | FLORALS Martha Lomeli Florals | STATIONERY Minted, Bells & Whistles | HAIR & MAKEUP Styling Trio | BRIDE’S FASHION Grace Loves Lace, Loeffler Randall | GROOM’S FASHION Daniel George | RENTALS Yaya Rentals | ENTERTAINMENT DJ Alex, Felipe Bazan (sax)
