Here are some favorites from Kelly and Jason’s wedding on Passion Island, a tiny private island off the coast of Cozumel, which is an island off of Mexico’s Riviera Maya, home to wedding hotspots like Cancun and Tulum. It is one of the prettiest places I’ve ever seen for a beach wedding, and it’s also a great place for adventurous travelers to tie the knot, since getting there from the mainland requires two taxi trips and two boat rides. Thus it seemed the perfect venue for Kelly and Jason, whose relationship blossomed while Jason was working on boats in Thailand. Kelly flew across the ocean a half dozen times to visit him as their romance blossomed, and then Jason moved back to California to be with her. Their love of adventure and travel is almost as palpable as their love for each other. Amazingly, they have settled in Colorado and they live about an hour from my home in Estes Park.

Their wedding weekend was punctuated by the unexpected, which would have been calamitous if it weren’t for Kelly and Jason’s ability to go with the flow — even if that flow included a lost wedding ring, a storm shuttering a sky lantern ceremony, a bunch of confiscated kegs that were supposed to fuel a party boat, a broken generator, and a hair and makeup team getting stranded in a swamp. Kelly and Jason managed it all with smiles. And rum.

The day before the wedding, I cruised out with the men to  shoot a day of beer drinking (mixed with a little deep sea fishing), and then photographed Kelly’s parents renewing their vows for their 40th wedding anniversary. This was a really touching evening and I’m super glad I got to shoot these two — it seemed like they’re more into each other now than ever before.

The makeup team got stuck in a swamp on the wedding day, but the ladies rallied hard with what little they had in their bags, and none of the guests had any idea that anything had gone wrong. The ceremony went off without a hitch, and an awesome party followed. Toward the end of it all, a freak storm blew in and an epic tropical rainfall began… while everyone was way out on the beach, trying to light sky lanterns for a ceremony. In the hustle to get everyone off the beach and back into the palapa, Jason’s ring fell off and vanished in the sand. D’oh! I asked them about it all, and they said it was par for the course for them. It wouldn’t have felt right if things had gone perfectly, which, in a weird way, means things did go perfectly.

The day after the wedding, we completed a marathon trash the dress session at the mainland resort they were staying at (Azule Fives) and along the Cenote Road that goes inland from Playa del Carmen.