Pierre and Gabriela's beautiful 5 de Mayo in San Pancho!

[Photoshootsvallarta]

 

 

My wife and I got married last May in the little town called San Pancho, 30 minutes north of Puerto Vallarta. Me being French and my wife being Mexican, we wanted to do something very Mexican and very different for my family and all of my friends who were coming to Mexico for the first time.

 

 

 

The Hotel :

 

The Hacienda San Pancho opened last year and is a boutique hotel specializing in weddings. It is just outside of the town called San Pancho, has 18 rooms and a few 3 bedroom villas. All of the rooms are very spacious and some of them have mini-swimming pools on their terrace.

 

The hotel is very private, since it closes for every wedding, we had no intruders or persons outside of the wedding at any point of the day. The staff was absolutely amazing, they all worked very hard to make everything we wanted possible. Gretel, who is the hotel manager helped us all along the way, she never said no to any of our crazy ideas (such as having a donkey in the beach club), you can see that she has a lot of experience coordinating weddings.

 

The hotel offers the possibility to host your wedding on its private beach, in the beach club with an amazing view to the beach or in the gardens inside the hacienda. We decided to use all 3 of those areas ! We had our cocktail in the Beach Club, our civil ceremony on the beach and the reception in the gardens. Since the hotel hosts only your guests, it allows you to have the party going much later than other hotels would. We decided to stop at 3am but I am sure that Gretel would have allowed us to go much later, if our feet could have handled it !

 

 

 

 

The Cocktail  and Ceremony:

 

We wanted something very relaxed with a vintage look to it. Gretel helped us find some old furnitures like a red Corona bar or an old bathtub. We filled the tub with bottles of beer, sodas, water and many coconuts which one of the hotels employee would then cut and prepare for us. Details Vallarta provided us with a few « seats Â» made out of straw and all of the little pieces of decoration that would bring more of a Mexican flavor. To add to this relaxed/fun atmosphere, we decided to create a photo-booth out of a donkey, a couple of sombreros and a poncho. It was a big hit ! Our Mariachi band was playing with its back to the ocean, and they would « shake their booty ! Â» while playing, which only added to the relaxed atmosphere we were looking for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From there, you could see the beach where we were going to have our ceremony. For the ceremony, we wanted something very simple and minimalist. We used an other of the old furniture Gretel helped us find as well as 2 big Agaves, which looked great!

 

 

 

 

The Reception :

 

The decoration at the reception was, again, very Mexican and simple. We had bought many small statues of little mariachis, little Katrinas, little pigs... Every table had a different set of statues. As centerpieces, we decided to create our owns and bought many little cactuses. We had 2 lounge areas with bonfires where our guests could relax when they were not eating or dancing.

 

Since we wanted a relaxed atmosphere throughout the wedding, we decided to have a buffet for dinner, and what best way to have a mexican buffet than to have Tacos ! Our favorite Taco stand from Puerto Vallarta came and cooked Fish and Shrimp Ceviche as well as Fish – Shrimp – Pork or Beef tacos or quesadillas. Mexicans always love tacos and our French and American guests found the food amazing and very fresh ! You can never go wrong with tacos !

 

Me being french, the only concession I could not make was on the cakes... I had to have french cakes for dessert, and I had to have many of them ! So our friend Eric, from the Paris Cafe in Puerto Vallarta made us many, many... many cakes ! Not only did they look good, they were amazing !

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vendor Impressions :

 

All of our guests told us they had an amazing time at our wedding and my family went back to France in love with Mexico ! They all thought the hotel was amazing and the staff even better. There could not have been a better place for our wedding than the Hacienda San Pancho and it would not have been the same without the help of Gretel.

 

Details Vallarta rented us all of the tables, chairs … We had put them in charge of setting up everything for us. They understood the concept we were going for and surprised us with many little details that made the decorations even better.

 

The food was amazing, fresh and very affordable. We bought all of the alcohol in Costco and it was also less expensive then through any catering company.

 

Our photographer Eva Sica is my business associate, I do not need to write a review on her, I think the photos speak for themselves.

 

My wife was extremely happy with her flowers and we were extremely happy with the DJ. We had given him some instructions on what kind of music we liked and he played only songs we loved (until 3am!) the quality of the speakers were very good.

 

The donkey was extremely polite, and smiled for all of the photos !

 

 

 

Hotel : Hacienda San Pancho

Photographer : Eva Sica

Coordinator and Decorations: Gretel from Hacienda San Pancho and Herriberto from Details Vallarta

Flowers : Sandra Lucia

Tacos : Mariscos Cisneros

Deserts : Eric Lenoir from the Paris Cafe

Mariachi : El Mariachi Loco

DJ : Watussy

 

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you would like a more detailed review of any of our vendors or if you need help with anything for your wedding!

 

Pierre

[MrsLtoBe]

Beautiful!!!  Reading through this is making me excited about my wedding!! Thank you so much for a great write up about Hacienda San Pancho, Pierre. April 5 is not coming soon enough.

[GauchoSteph]

Amazing photos! Very nice to hear from the Groom's perspective - congratulations!! 

[dallasinchicago]

Your wedding was gorgeous! This is an amazing venue!  How many rooms are there in the hotel?  Are there nearby hotels for all the guests that are not able to stay at Hacienda San Pancho?

[Photoshootsvallarta]

Thank you! The hotel has 18 rooms and a few 2 or 3 bedroom villas that you can rent as well. In total around 60 guests can stay at the hotel. There are a few hotel in Sayulita, 5 minutes away or Bucerias, 20 minutes away.
 

[LaLa1116]

Love this! 

[TropicalBride10]

IN LOVE! Congratulations on your wedding and your wife is beautiful! The wedding was simply stunning and all the little details made it that much better. Thank you so much for sharing!