Hi, I'm Sofia, and this is my story. Mexico destination wedding photographer.

cheriewedding.photos

Aug 10

4 min read

By Sofia · Chérie Wedding Photos

I still remember the first time I held a photo I had just printed in a dark room.

I was 17, in the middle of a year-long student exchange program far from the small Argentinian town I grew up in. I was alone, detached, navigating the particular loneliness of being somewhere nobody knows you. Photography was just a random course I'd taken to fulfill school requirements.

But the moment I held that print something shifted.

With a camera in my hands I felt powerful, protected, almost invisible. I could move through a room freely, express a way of seeing the world that I had been hiding from everyone. Including myself.

The Long Way Around I finished university — two degrees, marketing and hotel management — and felt nothing. Neither fulfilled me. I knew I liked photography. I knew I liked people. Beyond that, I wasn't sure.

So I did what made the most sense at the time: I left.

I traveled. A lot. With a camera always somewhere in my bag, shooting constantly, portraits in Australia, streets in Buenos Aires, light in Europe. The best photography education I ever had wasn't a workshop or a course. It was having a camera while moving through the world over and over and over again.

Shooting in Spain
Somewhere in Morrocco
Shooting a wedding in Tulum
Editorial in Tulum
Breakfast in Chefchaouen with my love
Me in Paris and my experimenting hair.

This is me, and some of my versions. Don't worry, my hair is back to it's original color now :)

Somewhere down an Indian railroad, somewhere on a Thai island, something clicked back into place.

I remember a night in Thailand — we ended up at a house party celebrating a wedding of someone we'd just met. The whole island seemed to be there. Strangers becoming friends in the span of a few hours, music, laughter, that particular joy that happens when people let their guard down completely. I was photographing all of it, invisible and completely present at the same time.

And I felt it — that old feeling of completeness. Of being in the world.

I knew I wouldn't let it go this time.

Mexico, and Finding My Style Mexico destination wedding photographer

Those travels led me to Mexico ten years ago. I arrived with energy and intention: to understand the photography I liked, to find the style that could represent me.

I put everything into it. I worked with people — lifestyle shoots, small businesses, documenting working lives. I got curious about editorial and fashion, and that world taught me something invaluable: how to give direction. How to guide a person into a frame without making them feel directed. How to create within simplicity.

tulum wedding photography — Shooting for @loaperals on a Tulum sunrise

I understood that portraying people was definitively what I loved most.

The image has a different depth when there's a person in it. It's layered with the challenge of connecting — of building enough trust that someone can really be themselves in front of your lens. That dance of connection became everything to me.

Why Chérie

When I built this brand, I wanted a name that held two things at once: elegance and spontaneity. The editorial eye and the completely unplanned moment.

Chérie, which is French for darling, for beloved, felt like it held all of that. Refined but warm.

Serious about craft but never stiff.

That tension is what I bring to every wedding I photograph. The carefully composed frame and the one that happened because I was in the right place at the right moment.

→ See what that looks like in the galleries.

And Then — Weddings

In the middle of all of this, I photographed a few weddings.

An immense new realm opened up. One event, one moment and within it, everything. People, laughter, love, sadness, euphoria. The intensity of the storytelling. The emotion running through a room. So many things happening at once: joy, tears, the particular behavior of families together, the way strangers become close over the course of a single day.

I loved all of it.

And I could pour my editorial instincts into it. The documentary heart and the fashion eye finally, they had a place where both belonged completely.

Wedding at Nizu Cancun
Annalise & Peter
Grand Finale for Josh and Alexis
My muse - editorial shot at Wild Tulum
Wedding beach Party at Payton and Quincy's wedding
tulum wedding photographer

→ If that resonates with you, tell me about your wedding.

Tulum, Cabo, Mérida — and Beyond

I'm based in Tulum, and it is an extraordinary place to photograph weddings. The light, the jungle, the Caribbean, the venues that wedding planners and designers have transformed into something genuinely cinematic — there is still so much room here, and I never tire of it.

But I look at Los Cabos and its dramatic desert sunsets meeting the Pacific and I feel that pull. I look at Mérida's romantic haciendas the colonial architecture, the courtyards, the golden afternoon light, and I can't wait to photograph love stories there.

This is what traveling taught me: new places don't just give you new backgrounds. They give you new eyes. A new venue, a new landscape, a new culture sharpens everything. It reminds you to look.

I photograph destination weddings across Mexico from Tulum and the Riviera Maya to Los Cabos, Mérida, and wherever the story takes me. Being bilingual means I move easily between worlds, between families, between the couple's universe and the room full of people celebrating them. It matters more than you'd think.

→ Planning a wedding in Mexico? I'd love to hear about it.

What I Believe About Photography

One of the greatest things a photograph can do is not just freeze a moment. It lets you see it, feel it, and live it again as many times as you want. The temperature of the afternoon. The smell of the flowers. The particular quality of laughter in that room.

But there's something else. At a wedding, photography becomes a way of stepping inside the core of something. A family, a story, a whole world of people who love each other. You get to witness the bonds, the inside jokes, the tears nobody planned, the strangers who became close by the end of the night.

That's what I'm chasing at every wedding. Not just the image but the feeling inside it. And the privilege of being let in. The joy of being a mexico destination wedding photographer.