Puerto Viejo · Costa Rica · Elopement Curator
Puerto Viejo
9.66°N · 82.75°W
Not a photographer for hire, a curator for the whole day: I design it, plan it, book it, style it, photograph it, film it, and hand it back to you. A complete companion to eloping on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica.
Puerto Viejo is the Caribbean side, and the single most useful thing to know about it is that it runs on the opposite calendar to the rest of the country: September and October, the wettest weeks on the Pacific, are among the driest here. It is Afro-Caribbean in language, food and music, it sits below Bribri indigenous territory, there is living reef offshore, and it is the least expensive region I work in Costa Rica. Palms leaning over the sand at Punta Uva, a coast road that ends at Manzanillo, and sloths above the path at Cahuita. The legal marriage needs no residency and no waiting period, so the paperwork stays small and the days stay the part that matters.
Best monthsFeb to Apr, Sep to Oct
The curationEnd to end
Packages from$9,700 USD
Guides on file3
Why an elopement, and why me
The Spiritual Union
An elopement is unlike a wedding. Whereas the wedding is purely focused on aesthetics and performance, elopements are about the spiritual merge: the two of you, a place that means something, and a day built to be lived instead of performed. Done right, it is the most honest set of photographs a couple will ever have. Done by committee, it falls apart in ways you only see later, in the pictures.
Buy a package from a planner
and the day is beautifully arranged, but there is no real “photographer” involved. The pictures come back looking like they were taken on a smartphone. You planned a film and got a receipt.
Bring your own photographer
and you get a good eye with no say in the day. There is a disconnect between what the plan was and what the pictures turn out to be, because the person shooting it did not build it.
Work with me
and you get the best of both worlds. I am a photographer first who plans the entire thing, then brings it home. The person who designs the light is the person standing in it with a camera.
Everyone else plans a day around an activity.
I write a story and play it through one.
It starts with your story, never a location. Before I plan a single thing, I sit with you and listen: how you met, what you are like when no one is watching, the small private details no one else would think to ask for. I write that into a narrative, and then I design the day to play it out. The hike, the boat, the drive up the mountain, that is only the vessel I run your story through, here in Puerto Viejo.
This is why the film and the album land the way they do. They are built to carry your story, beat by beat, so that years from now they still move you. Anyone can film two people doing something photogenic in a beautiful place. Turning who you actually are into a film and a set of stills that mean something is the harder thing, and it is the whole of what separates me from everyone else.
What it means to just be present.
Every extra person on an elopement is a seam. A planner to update, a second photographer angling for the same shot, a small crowd of vendors to be aware of. Each one pulls you a little out of the day, and the pictures inherit that split. The reason I hold the whole thing, the plan and the camera, is so that on the day there is no one to manage and no one to perform for.
Present means you are only ever looking at each other. You are not thinking about the schedule, because I am. You forget the camera is there, and that is the exact moment the real frames happen.
01
3 dispatches on fileThe Directory
The Costa Rica groundwork for a Puerto Viejo elopement, and the Talamanca coast's own dispatches. Start with the country guide, then write to me about this coast in particular, because it is not like the others.
02
Four days on the CaribbeanReal Elopements
Four elopements from the Puerto Viejo archive, written the way I remember them: the September nobody believed in, the sloths above the path, and the couple who cycled to their own wedding. Open any card to read the full story.
03
Three tiers · all-inclusive*, priced in USDThe Packages
One person plans, books, styles, photographs, films, and delivers your Puerto Viejo elopement. A curated experience rather than photography hours. Three tiers, each all-inclusive* of what I run on the ground, and each with its own album. This is the lowest entry price in Costa Rica and that is a fact about the coast rather than about the day: things cost less here than on the Pacific. What the upper tiers buy is the reef when it is clear, cooks rather than caterers, and a day inland in Bribri territory with the community rather than around it.
Three ways to elope in Puerto Viejo. Each is the whole experience, designed, planned, booked, styled, and shot by one person, and each comes with its own album. The tier sets how many days the trip runs and how much of it becomes a honeymoon. Everything is listed. There is no hourly meter and no add-on column.
Tier I
Essential
$9,700 USD
1 elopement day · all-inclusive*
The Keepsake Album · 20 pages
- ✓One designed elopement day, start to finish
- ✓Symbolic ceremony, officiant and styling
- ✓One signature location: the palms at Punta Uva, or the sand at Manzanillo
- ✓Photography with videography, shot by me alone
- ✓Planning, permissions, a local fixer and transport
- ✓A curated, hand-edited gallery
- ✓Available add-on: The Studio Editorial, from $2,500
Tier II · Recommended
Curated Signature
$20,000 USD
2 elopement days · all-inclusive*
The Signature Album · 40 pages, layflat
Everything in Essential, plus:
- ✓A second day, so the reef and the forest each get one
- ✓A cinematic film of the day, cut by hand
- ✓Richer florals, hair and makeup
- ✓A local fixer with you throughout
- ✓Caribbean cooking for the table, not resort catering
Experiences woven in
- ·The coast path inside Cahuita, early
- ·Punta Uva at the bottom of the tide
- ·Dinner cooked the way the coast actually eats
Tier III
Curated Adventuremoon
$25,800 USD
4 elopement days · elopement + honeymoon
The Heirloom Album · fine-art, boxed
Everything in Signature, plus:
- ✓The elopement and honeymoon woven into one four-day journey
- ✓The coast, the reef and the forest behind it
- ✓Upgraded photography, film and design moments
- ✓Full fixer support across the whole trip
Experiences woven in
- ·A day in Bribri territory, with people from it rather than about them
- ·Snorkelling the reef at Manzanillo when the water is clear
- ·The chocolate that grows here, from tree to table
- ·The whole coast road by bicycle, which is how it is meant to be seen
Signature locations in Puerto Viejo
The palms at Punta Uva · Manzanillo, at the end of the road · The coast path inside Cahuita · Playa Chiquita and the reef shallows · The forest behind Playa Cocles · The painted street in town, in the rain
*All-Inclusive covers everything I curate and run: planning, the symbolic ceremony, styling, activities, the dining on your itinerary, permits, local transport, and photography with videography. It does not include airfare or accommodation, which you book yourself. I am glad to recommend where to stay, but for legal reasons I do not book travel or lodging on your behalf.
Start here
Find your elopement archetype first.
Before the date, the tier, or the locations, take two minutes and find the kind of day you are actually after. It is where every day I design begins, and it tells me exactly where to point you in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica.
Take the Elopement Compass →04
What you will actually doThe Experiences
This is what you are really paying for. A handful of extraordinary days I design, book, and run for you, each one a chapter of the elopement. Turn the album: the photograph on one page, what it is on the other.
The Experiences
Click arrows to turn pages
The ceremony · morning
Vows Under the Palms
Punta Uva is the one everybody who has been here names first: a headland with palms leaning over sand and a reef holding the water flat and improbably green. It is a twenty minute drive from town and it does not feel like the same country as the Pacific. This is the ceremony location in every tier.
Included in every tier
Tap sides · swipe to turn pages
The day itself
How your elopement day goes
Once you have your archetype, here is how the day itself actually goes. Nothing here is your job to arrange. It is already arranged.
The slow morning
No rush, no room full of people. You get ready in your own time while I quietly catch the first frames: the note, the shoes, the light coming up.
We begin the story
We do not work a shot list. We live the day I designed around you, and I document it as it unfolds across Puerto Viejo, chasing the light I have already mapped.
The vows
Your words, out loud, with no audience but the place and me. This is the quietest and the most important part of the day, and I shoot it from a distance so it stays yours.
Through the activity
The hike, the boat, the dinner, the drive. This is where the story plays out and the best pictures live, because you are doing something real together, not posing beside it.
The last hour of light
I plan the whole day backward from it. When it arrives we are exactly where we need to be, unhurried, with time to spare.
The record
It comes back not as files but as a finished thing: a curated gallery, and on the Signature, a cinematic film and a printed album. The day, kept.
The full guide · free
The Costa Rica Elopement Guide
Before this coast, the bigger picture. I wrote the complete guide to eloping in Costa Rica: the volcano country, the cloud forest, the whale coast in the south, and this, the Caribbean side that behaves like a different country. It is the same thinking behind every day I design, in one place.
Read The Costa Rica Elopement Guide →
05
A sample plan, counted backward from your dateThe Timeline
A Puerto Viejo elopement starts with a conversation about the calendar, because almost everything couples have read about Costa Rican weather is wrong for this coast. Then the drive, which is long, and then the rest. This is the order it runs in.
The shape of it
Dates and tier, and the single most important conversation about this coast: it runs on the opposite calendar to the Pacific. September and October, the worst months on the other side, are among the better ones here.
Lodging and the ground
I book the lodging along the coast road, the transport, the fixer and the vendors. San Jose is four to five hours by road, so arrival is firmly its own day.
Access and permissions
Cahuita and the Gandoca-Manzanillo refuge are protected areas, and a commercial shoot inside one needs authorization arranged in advance while personal photography does not. Cahuita's Kelly Creek entrance runs on a voluntary donation rather than a fixed fee, which surprises people. I handle whatever each location needs.
The legal side
No residency requirement, no waiting period, no blood test. A notary performs the civil marriage with two adult witnesses. If either of you is divorced or widowed, raise it now, because one of the rules can move a date.
The design
Florals, styling, the cooks rather than caterers, the film. You see the day written out hour by hour.
Water and weather
Reef clarity depends on rain and swell, so the snorkelling stays flexible to the end. Everything else is fixed by then.
You stop deciding
Punta Uva or Manzanillo in the morning, the forest or the town when it rains, and dinner cooked properly. I run all of it.
What you keep
A sneak peek within the week, the full hand-edited gallery after, the film on the Signature tiers, and the album that goes with your tier.
06
The ones couples ask firstQuestions
The questions I hear most often from couples planning a Puerto Viejo elopement, answered plainly. If yours is not here, it will be in my first reply when you reach out.
07
Costa Rica dispatchesFrom the Journal
Longer reads for couples who want the whole country in view before choosing a coast: the complete Costa Rica guide, why this side has its own weather, and what makes it unlike the rest of the country.
Guide
How to Elope in Puerto Viejo
The Caribbean runs on the inverse calendar, so September here is the fortnight that drowns the Pacific. The cheapest of the seven, and the least like the rest.
14 min read →Guide
The Costa Rica Elopement Guide
The whole country in one place: the two coasts and their opposite seasons, what the legal marriage actually involves, and what each region costs.
8 min read →
Guide
How to Elope in Arenal
A volcano that is usually inside a cloud, and the one planning decision that fixes it: book dawns rather than a dawn.
14 min read →Tell me about your day on the Caribbean.
Share your date and I will come back within 48 hours with availability, an honest estimate, and the beach, the season, and the light I would point you toward.
Est. 1999 · Travelling worldwide · Priced in USD
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