Wedding and Tea Ceremony at Occidental Grand Xcaret – Tabitha and Dylan

“My parents have always tried to bring us up to respect and cherish our heritage. When it came to our wedding day, I wanted to embrace this and I’m lucky enough to have a WONDERFUL wife that loves my heritage as much as me.

“The white wedding on the beach was for us. It was our opportunity to express our love for each other in front of family and friends and to come together as one. The Chinese tea ceremony is our way to thank our elders for raising us. It shows our respects to them for what they have done for us in making us who we are today.” – Dylan

Multi cultural weddings are a lot of fun and we love the traditions they bring with them. Dylan and Tabitha performed a Chinese tea ceremony, complete with the beautiful traditional outfits. One of our favorite Chinese wedding traditions is the wedding games, designed for the bride’s family and friends to test the groom to see if he was ‘fit to take the bride away’.

“In ancient China, when a couple gets married, many times the groom will take the bride far away and she would not see her family and friends after the wedding. Friends and family of the bride would block the groom at the door of the bride’s home and ask him questions about the bride to see if he truly loves her; to enter, the groom must answer correctly. Sometimes he would offer tokens, such as money in red envelops, “hong bow”. When the friends and family feels that he truly loves her and is just in having her, they will invite him in to receive his bride.” – Dylan

The games begun with a whole lot of different currencies being offered to Tabitha’s family, including a cheque worth a mini-cow! Tabitha’s family tested Dylan with everything from singing to guava-under-the-chin passing.

“My favorite part of the wedding games was listing 9 ways to say “I love you” in different languages. Everyone was there to help me get to my bride, even your photographer – Thank you!!!” – Dylan

Tabitha and Dylan’s beach wedding ceremony was performed beside a Mayan ruin with spectacular stormy skies.

“The most amazing moment was seeing my beautiful bride coming down the isle. There is nothing that could get you ready for that moment and I will always remember it. Also having my best friend, who we haven’t seen for six years, playing our wedding song for us as Tabitha walked in.”  – Dylan

We asked Tabitha and Dylan why they chose the Occidental Grand Xcaret for their wedding:

The monkeys did it for us. Tabitha wanted to go to the Justice of the Peace but I had other plans in mind. We both wanted something small, simple, and where we didn’t have to cater to everyone. We wanted somewhere that everyone can have fun on their own and enjoy themselves. When were started to look at destination weddings, there were many places that came up. Once we heard about the opportunity to have our wedding at a Maya ruin, we were interested. Then we found out that there was this awesome nature park next door and we fell in love. We are both animal lovers and this just seemed to be perfect for us.”  – Dylan

Principal Photographer: Valeria

Second Photographer:  del Sol Associate

Location: Occidental Grand Xcaret

Gown Boutique: Maggie Sottero

Hair and Makeup:  StylingTrio Riviera Maya