Todos Santos · Mexico · Elopement Curator
Todos Santos
23.45°N · 110.22°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 Pacific side of Baja.
Todos Santos is the answer for couples who like the idea of Cabo and not the reality of it. It is an hour up Highway 19 from the same airport, it is a town rather than a corridor, and because it faces the Pacific the sun goes down over the water, which the Caribbean side of Mexico cannot do at all. The thing to plan around is the sea. Most of the beaches immediately west of town, La Cachora and La Poza in particular, have steep shore break, backwash and rip currents, and they are not swimming beaches whatever they look like in a photograph. Los Cerritos is the one that is. So the day here is built on the bluffs and in the town, with the water as the backdrop rather than the venue, and it finishes on a headland with the sun going into the sea.
Best monthsNov to Apr
The curationEnd to end
Packages from$7,300 USD
Guides on file4
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 Todos Santos.
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
4 dispatches on fileThe Directory
The Mexico groundwork for a Todos Santos elopement, and the Pacific side's own dispatches. Start with the country guide, then write to me about the bluffs.
02
Four days I photographed on the Pacific sideReal Elopements
Four elopements from the Todos Santos archive: the couple who searched Cabo and meant this, the permit nobody mentions, and the December wind that sent us to a chapel and then back out again. 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 Todos Santos elopement. A curated experience rather than photography hours. Three collections, each all-inclusive* of what I run on the ground, and each with its own album. The price is the same anywhere in Mexico, so choosing the Pacific side costs you nothing extra and buys you a sunset over water.
Three ways to elope in Todos Santos. 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
$7,300 USD
One day, above & below the water
The Keepsake Album · 20 pages
- ✓One designed elopement day, start to finish
- ✓Symbolic ceremony, celebrant and styling
- ✓The municipal event permit, filed and paid
- ✓Photography with film, shot by me alone
- ✓Personal flowers, and hair and makeup for one
- ✓Planning, a local fixer and the driving on Highway 19
- ✓A reserved restaurant wedding dinner for two
Tier II · Recommended
Signature
$8,900 USD
Two days, your choice of adventure
The Signature Album · 20 pages, layflat
Everything in Essential, plus:
- ✓A second day, so the town and the coast are not the same morning
- ✓A longer film, cut by hand, with your vows recorded
- ✓Richer florals and ceremony styling
- ✓A 20-page layflat album
Experiences woven in
- ·Your choice of one private charter: a motor yacht at El Arco, or a helicopter over the cape
- ·A second portrait day on the Pacific bluffs
- ·The town at first light, before anything opens
Tier III
Honeymoon
$11,400 USD
Three days, made for you
The Heirloom Album · 30 pages, fine-art
Everything in Signature, plus:
- ✓The elopement and the honeymoon woven into one three-day journey
- ✓Todos Santos, Los Cabos and the Sea of Cortez side, with the crossing between
- ✓A 30-page fine-art album
Experiences woven in
- ·A private candlelit beach dinner with a musician
- ·The East Cape, which is the quiet half of this peninsula
- ·Grey whales offshore between roughly mid-December and mid-April
Signature locations in Todos Santos
The Pacific bluffs west of town, at sunset · The pastel streets and the mission square · A private chapel courtyard · Los Cerritos, which is the swimmable one · El Arco at Land's End, by boat · The desert and the cardón, inland
*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 Todos Santos, Mexico.
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 · the bluffs
Sunset Over the Water
This is the whole argument for the Pacific side. Mexico's Caribbean coast faces east and cannot give you a sunset over the sea; Todos Santos faces west and does it every evening it is clear. The bluffs west of town are open, high and largely empty, and the ceremony goes there in the last hour. The variable is wind, which comes up the face in the afternoon, so I pick the exact position on the day rather than on a map.
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 Todos Santos, 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 Mexico Elopement Guide
Before the desert, the bigger picture. I wrote the complete guide to eloping in Mexico: the six regions I work in, one national price, what the civil registry asks of two foreigners, and which coast gives you which light. It is the same thinking behind every day I design, in one place.
Read The Mexico Elopement Guide →
05
A sample plan, counted backward from your dateThe Timeline
A Todos Santos elopement is planned against a sunset table and the swell, and the municipal permit goes in months ahead. I handle the filing, the fixer and the running order, and I book a wind backup on every coastal day. This is how it goes.
The shape of it
Dates and collection. November to April is the dependable window here. May through August gets hot and humid, and September into October carries the real hurricane risk, with the eastern Pacific season running 15 May to 30 November. If whales matter, look at January to March.
The base and the ground
I tell you where to stay and why, and you book it. Town or bluff changes your mornings completely. I book the celebrant, the fixer, the styling and the driving, and I confirm the last access road if your property is off the highway.
The municipal permit
Todos Santos is in the Municipality of La Paz, whose published process covers weddings on beaches and on private property. It needs the venue's consent, a security quotation, Civil Protection sign-off, SEMARNAT and ZOFEMAT consent and an ambulance arrangement, with a published fee and a one business day turnaround once the file is complete. I file it. Nothing on the sand may block the twenty metre federal zone.
The legal side
The ceremony is symbolic. A binding Mexican civil marriage goes through the Registro Civil with apostilled and translated documents, a medical certificate and witnesses. Most couples marry legally at home and keep this day for the vows. If you want the legal version here I will arrange it separately and quote it.
The design
Florals, styling, the charter choice on the upper tiers, the table, the film. You see the day written out hour by hour, with the wind backup named rather than implied.
Sunset and swell
The ceremony time comes off the sunset table. I also read the swell, because it decides whether the cove is reachable and whether Los Cerritos is usable, and I will move the running order rather than push a location that is not safe.
You stop deciding
The town before it wakes, the bluffs at the end of the day, the boat at Land's End if you chose it. I run all of it.
What you keep
Preview photographs within 72 hours, the full hand-edited gallery within four weeks, the film within eight, and the album that comes with your collection.
06
The ones couples ask firstQuestions
The questions I hear most often from couples planning a Todos Santos elopement, answered plainly. If yours is not here, it will be in my first reply when you reach out.
07
Mexico dispatchesFrom the Journal
Longer reads for couples weighing this coast against the corridor an hour south: the complete Mexico guide, the Cabo comparison, and what the civil registry really asks.
Guide
How to Elope in Todos Santos
The Pacific side gives you the sunset Cabo cannot, the municipal permit is real and cheap, and most of the beaches here are not swimming beaches.
14 min read →
Compare
Los Cabos or Todos Santos?
Same airport, one hour apart, two completely different days. Which coast, which light, and which one you actually want.
10 min read →Guide
The Mexico Elopement Guide
The whole country in one place: the six regions I work in, one national price, and what the civil registry asks of two foreigners.
8 min read →Tell me about your evening on the Pacific.
Share your date and I will come back within 48 hours with availability, an honest estimate, and the sunset, the wind, and the bluff I would point you toward.
Est. 1999 · Travelling worldwide · Priced in USD
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