A Multi-Day Wedding in Tulum: Ramya & Thomas

Three days, two cultures, one breathtaking Tulum coastline. A Hindu multi-day wedding celebration at Villa Las Estrellas, photographed by Chérie Wedding Photos.

Some weddings are an event. And then there are the ones that are an experience — the kind that unfold slowly, build their own momentum, and by the time the last night arrives, feel less like a wedding and more like something that was always meant to happen exactly this way.

Ramya and Thomas was that kind of wedding.

Three days. Two cultures. One stretch of Tulum coastline that looked, every single evening, like someone had painted it.

The Couple

Thomas grew up between Italy and Tulum — his family has called this stretch of the Riviera Maya home for years, his parents woven into the fabric of the place in the way only people who truly belong somewhere can be. Ramya comes from a Hindu family, raised abroad, carrying her culture with her in the way people do when they love where they come from but have built their life somewhere else entirely.

Together they are warm, relaxed, completely themselves. The kind of couple that makes everyone around them feel at ease — which is exactly why their wedding felt the way it did.

They chose Villa Las Estrellas, a hotel perched above Tulum's beach, as the backdrop for all three days. And Tulum, being Tulum, showed up in its full winter glory — the ocean impossibly turquoise, the sunsets doing things that no filter could improve.

Day One — The Mehndi

The henna. The women. The beginning.

The first gathering of a multi-day wedding is always its own thing. People arriving from different cities, different countries, some not having seen each other in years. There's a particular energy to that first day — part reunion, part anticipation, everyone still finding their footing in the same space.

For Ramya's Mehndi, that energy was exactly right. Mostly women, drinks in hand, the kind of laughter that comes from people who have history together. The henna artist worked slowly and beautifully while the conversation moved around her — catching up, stories, the easy warmth of people who love each other getting reacquainted.

And behind all of it, that ocean. Winter light on the Caribbean is something else entirely — softer, more golden, less aggressive than the high summer sun. The kind of light that makes everything feel a little more significant. The kind of light that makes you stop mid-sentence and just look.

Day Two — The Morning Ceremony & Lunch

Sacred, intimate, unhurried.

Hindu ceremonies have a quality that I find deeply moving to photograph — they are ancient and specific and full of meaning that has been carried across generations. Even when the couple has been raised far from those roots, the rituals hold something real.

Ramya and Thomas's ceremony happened at the beach at dawn. Early morning Tulum is its own world — the light arriving slowly over the water, the beach still quiet, the air carrying that particular stillness that belongs only to the first hours of the day.

The colors of a Hindu wedding ceremony against the Caribbean are something I wasn't prepared for. The saffron, the red, the marigold — all of it against that blue. It photographs like a dream and it feels like one too.

After the ceremony, lunch gathered everyone together for the first time as one group — families and friends from both worlds, finding each other over food and the particular warmth that comes from having witnessed something sacred together.

If you're planning a destination wedding in Tulum with multiple days of celebration, I'd love to hear about it — multi-day weddings are some of my favorite work to document.

Day Three — The Reception & Party

The one everyone had been waiting for.

By the third night, something had shifted. Three days of shared meals and rituals and sunsets had done their work — these weren't two groups of people anymore, they were one. And they were more than ready to celebrate.

The reception was on the beach at night, the kind of Tulum evening that feels cinematic without trying. Thomas's friends — many of them locals, people who had grown up alongside his family here — brought an energy to the dancefloor that you can't manufacture. This wasn't a wedding party performing celebration. This was a group of people who genuinely wanted to be exactly where they were, doing exactly what they were doing.

The dancefloor was the main event and it delivered completely.

What a Three Day Wedding Actually Gives You

A single wedding day is beautiful. But there is something that a multi-day wedding celebration offers that one day simply cannot — the arc of it. The slow build from the intimate first gathering, through the

sacred ceremony, to the full release of that last night.

As a photographer, it gives me time to understand the couple, to find the moments that belong specifically to them, to be invisible by the time the most important parts happen. By night three I know how Thomas looks at Ramya when she's not watching. I know which friends will cry during the speeches. I know where the light falls best at what time.

That knowledge shows in the photographs.

Thinking about a multi-day wedding or destination celebration in Tulum? Let's talk about your vision — even if it's still just an idea.

Planning Your Own Destination Wedding in Tulum

Whether you're dreaming of one day or three, a symbolic ceremony at sunrise or a full multi-cultural celebration, Tulum holds all of it. The light, the landscape, the particular magic of this place — it shows up for every kind of love story.

Chérie Wedding Photos is based in Tulum and photographs weddings and elopements across Mexico and the Riviera Maya. I travel for the right wedding — Bacalar, Mérida, Cabo, wherever the story takes us.

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Chérie Wedding Photos · Tulum based, shooting across Mexico and the Riviera Maya @cheriewedding.photos