A Styled Shoot

*Emma & Merlin outside of their romantic tent tucked away in the mountains surrounding Antigua Guatemala.*

Concept

Here the Catholic Church owns many of the wedding venues, and the general discrimination against same-sex couples in the country can make planning a wedding in this beautiful city a nightmare. However, there are wedding vendors here who are working to open up Antigua Guatemala as a place that is welcome to all couples in love regardless of race, religion, gender or sexuality in the hopes that our affordable and beautifully unique wedding destination will become home to more diverse weddings in the very near future.

Myself along with a team of all women wedding vendors (an anomaly in the male-dominated society of Guatemala) got together this month to put on a styled shoot that showed the type of artistic expression and diversity we want to see more of in Guatemala. The team consisted of a coordinator, a baker, and floral designer from Guatemala; a dress and suit maker from Colombia; and a loved-up couple who originally hail from Venezuela and Israel, and are of Christian and Jewish faith respectively.

We used an unopened to the public venue to host our creative love event and put our creativity to the test thinking up ways to make this session the most beautiful possible in Guatemala. Even with this team of visionaries, we experienced our share of challenges in planning and putting on this styled session.

Inspiration From the Floral Designer:

I didn’t want an overly romantic atmosphere for the styled shoot. My vision was something soft but at the same time eclectic and wild. That’s why I choose burgundy anthuriums mixed with some pampas grass.
Textures are a big deal to me in my work, that’s why choosing the correct flowers/elements are so important. The texture that the pampas gives to any design is very particular. I find them very wild and ethereal.
The silk of one of the models suit was a statement not only for the shape, and not only because it gave to her a touch of strength and sexiness, also by the color.

Flowers:

Spray mojolika rose
Spray rose red mikado
Carnaval Anthuriums
Eucalipthus
Pampas grass
Air plants

*Hand in hand: wedding ideas from the creative community in Antitgua Guatemala catered to the LGBTQ+ community.*

A note on equality minded weddings

For people living in LA, London, Paris, Melbourne, etc. it might be hard to imagine just how taboo just two women kissing can be in a country like Guatemala. Despite the younger generation’s protests in the capital to be a more progressive country, the country still has a long way to go in becoming an equal opportunity place for love—especially for Guatemalan born people.

The mere suggestion of an LGBTQ+ wedding was so offensive to some of the vendors we approached for this session that they insisted they would not be working with us in the future for other weddings. A cake maker refused to work with us, our usual furniture supplier was suddenly out of stock of everything that we needed (despite it being low season for weddings), and our location canceled on us the day before the shoot—leaving us at a loss for the type of discrimination couples who may wish to get married in Guatemala or other Latin American countries may face when trying to plan a wedding or elopement.

Yet, we made it happen. The team pulled strings and made last minute adjustments to bring our ideas to life in an effort to normalize love of all kinds in our country. We used a never before seen (or used) venue, made a custom dress and suit for the couple, and got creative with floral decorations.