How We Pulled It Off: A Rollicking Ranch Wedding in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Claudio Piédrola
Miami-based couple Carlos Adyan and Carlos Quintanilla lead busy professional lives: Adyan is the host of the NBCUniversal Telemundo show En Casa Con Telemundo and co-proprietor of restaurant A Fuego Lento, while Quintanilla is the vice president of original content for Sony Pictures Television. Given the couple's high-profile jobs (and their combined Instagram following of nearly 700,000), when it came time to plan their wedding, the couple felt like they needed to step away from their home city to get into a nuptial mindset. “We thought a destination wedding would take us out of our setting—we’ll feel like we’re on vacation, not like we have to go to work tomorrow after the wedding,” says Adyan.
And so they married last month in the charming colonial city of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Though Quintanilla is Mexican, and both men speak Spanish, it was no easy feat to plan a 400-person wedding—sure to be splashed all over social media—1,300 miles away from home. Here, the newlyweds share how they went about plotting a rollicking May celebration with 400 of their closest friends and family in attendance.
Mull locations across Latin America
With their hearts set on a destination celebration, the couple started by considering—and visiting—the places they were born; as noted, Quintanilla is Mexican while Adyan is Puerto Rican. “We traveled to a lot of places, which was really fun,” says Adyan. “We started in Puerto Rico, and I love Puerto Rico, but it’s not normal there to have a wedding of 400 people, and that was our number from the beginning.”
Mexico City wasn’t quite right, either, as it wouldn’t lend that magical transportive quality they hoped to impart. The couple flew to Guatemala to check out some spots, but “the curfew there is [typically] 11 p.m., and we wanted to party a little bit later than that,” laughs Adyan.
Let the destination lead the way
The city of San Miguel de Allende, long loved by artists and tourists alike, wasn’t even on their radar until friends who lived there suggested they come visit and consider the place for their wedding. “My friends said, ‘Hey, why haven’t you tried San Miguel de Allende?’ Honestly I’d seen photos and never visited!” says Adyan. With an invitation to stay at their friends’ ranch, the couple spent two weeks over Christmas 2023 visiting the area, trying restaurants, and “discovering every single spot.”
They fell in love with both San Miguel and the ranch, which is located within the city’s community of Las Fincas. “When we came here, energy doesn’t lie. It was just the place,” he continues. “It’s phenomenal, the energy you feel there.” In the end, their generous friends had everything they’d wanted: The couple decided to marry on the ranch itself.
Learn that two planners (in two countries) are better than one
It was a good thing that Quintanilla and Adyan flipped for the property, because it would take a lot of work to get it ready for their celebration. “The venue was not prepared for weddings. We had to bring in everything: the stage, the floor, the tent, everything,” says Adyan. In addition to a whole team of rental companies and vendors working throughout the week of their celebration, the couple wound up hiring two wedding planners: one in San Miguel and one in Puerto Rico.
Their planner in Puerto Rico, Deisa Rivera, was someone they’d met and immediately connected with deeply while touring venues there. “We were like, ‘How can we include Deisa in this?’ But she jumped when we told her about San Miguel,” says Adyan. They knew they’d need an expert on the ground in San Miguel de Allende, too. “We hired Angie Precoma, and what we love about her is she knows everyone that you can imagine,” says Adyan. “All the secrets!” adds Quintanilla. “She’d say, ‘We can find this here. This one is better quality. This one is a better price.’ She put everything together for us.” Ultimately, Deisa was in charge of big-picture logistics and production, while Angie was on-site making recommendations and finally, inspections.
Find your unique aesthetic
San Miguel de Allende is known for its colorful buildings, the cobblestoned streets awash in sunset hues of pink and yellow. Bur for their wedding, Adyan and Quintanilla wanted a sleeker, more masculine palette, sticking with whites and greenery. “We didn't want to be cheesy,” says Quintanilla. The couple worked with Abraham Bautista to bring that not-so-floral vision to life.
The reception’s focal point was two trees, while a key element of the ceremony design revolved around the ranch’s lake. “We got married on a platform on the lake, with people around us. We did that because we think that water moves energy,” explains Adyan.
To bring home their chic, classic vibe, the two men wore slightly different, complementary versions of the same suit by Dominican designer Jose Ventura, whom they met through a stylist in Mexico.
Set the party tone… with puppets
Lest the wedding seem too classic (or staid), the weekend kicked off on Friday night with a callejoneada, a traditional processional through the streets of San Miguel de Allende for the couple and their guests. Leading the festive atmosphere were mojigangas, which are “kind of big piñatas with our faces on them,” says Quintanilla. “It’s a party in the streets.” The mojigangas were a favorite touch of Adyan’s because the puppets resemble cabezudos, oversized puppet heads worn in parades in his own Puerto Rican culture.
The walk led to a welcome party on the roof at Live Aqua San Miguel de Allende, where the couple and many of their guests were staying. “We showed our guests the Mexican culture not only through the drinks and tapas, but the phenomenal views,” says Adyan. From there, the crowd were invited to dinner at La Sirena Gorda in the center of downtown San Miguel. The proximity of the events around town was carefully plotted “because wanted guests to actually have the experience of walking around and having fun,” he continues.
Celebrate your heritage—everywhere
The mojigangas were one of the first, and most visible, celebrations of the couple’s cultures, but their wedding day brought many more. The cocktail hour after the ceremony featured signature drinks: mezcalitas and margaritas for Mexico, and a piña colada with Flor de Caña rum for Puerto Rico. When it came time for dinner, guests were greeted with little drink kits and instructions for making their own mezcalitas at their seats.
The cocktail hour’s soundtrack was a mariachi band, Los Campos, and loads of tinkling marimba by Tono 13. Their first dance, which was choreographed ahead of time by Gisela Rivera, was set to a medley of their three songs: “Llegaste” by Luis Fonsi, “Eres Mi Sueño” by Fonseca, and “Caminar de Tu Mano” by Río Roma. It is now Adyan’s favorite memory of the night. “The entire world just faded away in that moment,” he says.
And for food, Adyan had really wanted some Puerto Rican fusion, but the couple struggled to find a chef in Mexico who could pull off the Caribbean dishes in quite the way Adyan was hoping. They ultimately decided to focus on Mexican food, with catering by Banquetes Mediterráneo, though given the wedding cake’s importance in Puerto Rican culture they worked with a bakery, Café Verintort, for a spicy tres leches cake.
Honor your mothers
An aspect of the wedding that felt intrinsic not just to the couple’s cultures but themselves were several moments of appreciation for their mothers. The moms walked them down the aisle to their ceremony, and at the reception the newlyweds surprised their mothers, and the whole guest list, by bringing out the Cuban singer Lenier to perform “Como Te Pago”—a song about never being able to repay a mother for her love—during their mother-son dances.
Guarantee a rager of a party
One more bit of culture the couple were sure to undertake was the hora loca, or crazy hour, a tradition in many Latin American countries in which the party and its energy get turned up via special music, entertainers, confetti, and more. Though it’s a common festivity in many Latin American countries, the newlyweds actually associate it with their home base in the U.S. “Living in Miami makes you adopt things from every single country,” says Adyan.
To amp up the energy following dinner and the initial hours of dancing, the couple brought out props like sombreros and mini flags of Puerto Rico and Mexico during their crazy hour. Late-night snacks of chilaquiles, tacos, and elote kept guests partying until the wee hours—just as the couple had hoped they would.
Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler
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