Our wedding in Mexico City

If you can hire a saxophone player to show up at your wedding, do it

Every day of our wedding weekend, no matter how tired I was feeling, or how late I went to bed, I would wake up around 530am or 6p with my mind going Usain Bolt mode. I relied on Yoga Nidra meditations to try to restore some of the lost sleep, but safe to say, the anticipatory anxiety was getting the best of me. 

Preamble

I took a morning walk to grab a coffee (recommended for anxiety), and Roma Norte really had its makeup on that morning. Plaza Rio de Janiero was sun kissed as I walked to Forte for an espresso. I love Forte, but if I had ordered a pour over, I would have missed the wedding.

We met the guys at their airbnb and the energy was festive. It felt strange being the center of attention. I rallied everyone to Tacos Don Juan for their weekend only quesabirria and their always on arrachera. The quesabirria are made to order on a tiny griddle and come out so delightfully crispy, it’s one of my favorite tacos in the city. But by the time the tacos were in hand, we had to race back to the house and only beat the photographer by 5 minutes.

The homies rallied. The homies supported. It was feu de bois.

Chris ironed my shirt as crispy as the birria. Reuben helped me get that dapper dimple in my tie and Brett made an awkward joke that he looked like a Men’s Warehouse employee. He also filmed b-roll of the day so he more than redeemed him. On a weekend that resembled a 72 hr dream state, it was surreal to have my friends from different walks of life surrounding me in support and laughter. Complements abound on my new suit. Is this how Leo (DiCaprio) feels all the time?

First Looks

I made my way back to the plaza with a silly little stop at the Oxxo for water. It was funny, but felt fitting to be in the Oxxo on my wedding day.

Sponsor me Oxxo!

As I stood in the shady area of the park waiting for my almost wife, I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but I was elated I had no idea what Tiffany’s dress was going to be like. She was a vision out of old Hollywood, so elegant and beautiful.

Our photographers were so easy to work with and took us around the neighborhood for different shots. We had the bold idea to get some technicolor mango & chamoy ice cream. Chamoy is like if you dropped hot sauce in radioactive waste and added sugar. Once an unexpected 3rd scoop hit the top of the cone, I knew we were in serious trouble. The top scoop tumbled off almost immediately. Tiffany managed to catch it in her hand without a drop getting on the dress. Que barbaridad!

Good tailoring allows for movement

Time seemed to be going 1.5X as it was time to head to Museo Casa de la Bola for more photos and well…the wedding! 

15 minutes of chaos

After running around in the sun, the photographers recommended a suero. It felt crazy that we were just discovering this now on our 6th time in CDMX, but a suero is water, fresh lime juice, and a salt rim. It’s Mexican gatorade. The limes are so good and it all brings you back to life immediately.

Arriving at the venue, we found out that the entire dirt path to the ceremony, the one we were supposed to “process” on, was completely muddy. They were still getting the chuppah together and started telling the arriving guests to “explore the garden” while they got it ready, setting things up for guests to see Tiffany before the ceremony. Ruh roh! 

We rallied some friends and family to help us out and in 15 minutes, everything was magically back to normal. They had managed to scrape the mud off the path, heard all the guests into their seats, and it was go time. 

It sounds crazy, but as I got in place with my parents, I felt like an athlete heading into the arena for the championship game. Is this what they mean by man in the arena? Probably not. There was a rush of energy as I heard “Song for Zula” come on and we walked down the aisle.

I hugged my parents and stood in this beautiful garden, under the chuppah. I couldn’t stop looking around and smiling, in this nurturing cocoon of friends and family. When Tiffany walked forward to great me to Tchaikovsky, my heart was at the seams.

Our friends Tyler Costin and Michael Harris officiated the wedding with thoughtful contributions from my cousin Rabbi Greg, Tiffany’s Colombia grandma, and our 7 siblings who luckily equaled the 7 blessings traditional to the wedding ceremony. 

The ceremony drew from our cultural backgrounds with Jewish rituals and a Catholic blessing in Spanish from Tiffany’s grandma. I’ll never get tired of Gabrielito. My cousin Greg sang a short nigun (Jewish melody) for the bride and groom. 

Choosing to go with friends vs a Rabbi as officiants was the perfect decision and the complement of Tyler and Michael couldn’t have gone better. Michael is meticulous, careful, and thorough which pairs perfectly with Tyler’s soulful, theatrical, presence. They are both two of the most thoughtful people I know. Tyler even managed to sneak in a few lines from Company’s “Being Alive” which was for the heads. I was punch drunk by the time Tiffany read her vows. They were so thoughtful, so deeply considered, so loving, and her. 

Although we had an endless supply of well crafted mexcalitas, palomas, and margaritas on offer, Tiffany and I were committed to barely drinking, so we could remember the textures of the night. This advice came from our friends Michael & Sarah and I treasure it in the rear view.

As our guests mingled with drinks & snacks, Tiff and I took a short respite in one of the back rooms of Bola, with coats of armor, dark wood, and baroque oil paintings.

They dimmed the lights, queued up This is What You Came For. Hey if you are going to muster that main character energy, this is the song for it. Speaking of main character energy, it is remarkable how my people at the wedding told me they had their own personal waiter.

While not true, the waiters carried a diligence that required steadfast restraint as a fresh spicy margarita could hit your hands segundos after your last if you let it. 

We couldn’t give our guest list of savvy gourmands worse food than they could find outside of the wedding. Our caterer Atipico delivered with fresh tortillas, duck barbacoa, bright aguachiles and oysters from Ensenada. 

We followed dinner into mother-son, father-daughter dances. It was a tender moment that I’m glad we didn’t skip, rolling into our first dance to “Sunday kind of Love” by Etta James.

We found dancing

And then it was on! Jewish dancing was pure chaos in the best way with Dan Lerman queuing up some Jewish style do-see-dos before we were lifted into the air by our luckily very fit pals. 

The Jewish ritual of being hoisted in the air in a chair with your new bride is heaven on earth. The ongoing stacking of dopamine (no Huberman) was really something to behold. We had DJ Vala kick things off with more accessible disco, motown, and salsa music to encourage the widest possible audience to hit the dance floor. His advice was that the bride and groom need to stay on the dancefloor if you want to keep people dancing and we took that brief to heart. I only left the dance floor twice. Once for a shot of herradura and once to pee. That’s it! 

The dancing escalated into increasingly more bangers. I came out of retirement with my err…avant garde one armed pushup dance and Dom dropped his worm. Basically, wedding stuff. 

Tiffany spent the last year as an online student of Mexico City weddings and her studies paid off with the discovery that you could hire a saxophone player to show up late at night and accompany the bangers. The first sax player we found was $1500 for 15 minutes. As committed to the bit that we were, and as impressed we were that she had this, this was far out of budget. Luckily DJ Vala steered us to Jason Saxofon and the absolute joy that this man unleashed on our friends was something else. Jason’s sax on the dancefloor and a box of foam glow sticks took things to 11. Levels by Aviici hits different with Jason Saxofon.

The sax moment went right into the vibora. Tiffany and I stood on chairs each with a bottle of cold Herradura in our hands. I also had my trusty cash cannon, which if you are going to use a cash cannon, this was the time.

En Esta Economia? (*not real money)

Our guests lined up for a little tequila poured into their mouths for even more escalation of pure joy, and we had Topo Chico pours for our sober pals. 

"You married hot" - Dan & Kim

I asked DJ Vala if he could play a little more rap and he looked at me with the most earnest look on his face and said “YES! EXACTLY! That’s where we are going next” and proceed to roll into some all time faves like “Bugatti”, “Mo Bamba,” and “Jumpman.” 

And just like that, the wedding was over(!). We closed things out with K-Ci & JoJo’s “All My Life” with the remaining friends and family surrounding us in a circle and singing a long. I didn’t realize we’d be in the middle and it was frankly too intense. Tiff was crying tears of joy and I had to run around high fiving every guest in a circle just to break the tension (maybe I should have leaned into it). 

Our friends John & Rafa, along with supplying bottles of their beautiful mezcal Yotobi (now available!), arranged an after party venue so folks could hang and longer. Greg was a late night hero™ for showing up with bags of Orinoco tacos. By then, my 4 hrs of sleep per night had started to show it’s cracks, and the last couple hours were a blur. We basked in the pure joy, and frankly strong sense of accomplishment for giving our closest friends and family, a damn good time. 

In February of 2023, we didn’t even know if we were going to have a wedding, but through a series of big decisions, and hundreds of little ones, and the partnership of Ganesha wedding, we ended with a beautiful lasting memory. For us, we wanted the wedding to feel like one big thank you to the friends & family that made up our community, raised us, loved us, nurtured us, propelled us forward to this point and beyond. I hope that landed. The perpetual smiles around the room seemed to show we were on the right track.