Puerto Rico wedding in a rainforest with love and a 5-piece Latin band

puerto rico wedding rainforest walt whitman — *Photography by Nilka Gissell*

Offbeat partners: Kenzie Magner and Evin Magner

Date and location: 8/25/2022, Hacienda Siesta Alegre, Rio Grande, Puerto Rico

Our Puerto Rico wedding at a glance:

We've been together 8 years, and really just wanted to have a big party that we just happened to get married at. Puerto Rico was the first trip we took together, and travel is a big part of our relationship – so it has always held a special place in our hearts.

All of our vendors for the wedding were local to Puerto Rico, and the only direction we gave them was “Moody Tropical” and let them run with their ideas so our décor, flowers, cake, pastries and ceremony were all a surprise until day-of!

We asked that only native plants to the rainforest be used, and they were cut fresh from the surrounding properties the morning of the wedding (my partner is currently doing a PhD in Plant Biology, so this was very important to us.)

Our cake was done by Flor De Harina with lemon and passionfruit, and she surprised us with a plethora of stunning pastries that she chose.

Everything we did was very intentional. We didn't have a wedding party so much as a party wedding: a welcome party at a beach bar, a post-wedding food truck party, and then an island trip on a catamaran a few days later! Really we just wanted our friends and family to come travel with us for a week.

Tell us about the ceremony:

Our vows were excerpts from the Walt Whitman poem “Song of the Open Road”. Our friend Jeff read a mashup of both that poem and Whitman's “Song of Myself” near the end of the ceremony. We made signing the wedding certificate part of the ceremony, with two of our friends signing as witnesses.

We'll be featuring Kenzie and Evin's complete ceremony in a future article – for now, here's a few excerpts!

Officiant: Love is what we all share. It is the great unifier, our one universal truth. No matter who we are, where we have come from, what we believe, we know this one thing: love is what we are doing right. And that brings us here today to the union in matrimony of Kenzie and Evin…

Kenzie:
I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

Tell us about the reception:

The reception had a Puerto Rican buffet and a 5-piece Latin band that we all danced the night away to!

The biggest hit of the night was Café Sobre Grecas – a bicycle coffee bar(!) with local beans from the farms in the area. Francisco made amazing coffee drinks: lattes, cappuccinos, cold brew, nitro, etc. To top it off, you could get a shot of fresh espresso, pass it to the bartender, and boom: Rum Coffee drink (an absolute must for a late night 30+ crowd)!

What were the most important lessons you learned from your wedding?

Get a wedding planner. It's worth the cost to not have to think about things the day of. For us, it was imperative to have someone local to work with vendors, and know the hidden gems of PR that I would never have thought of.

Give your vendors creative freedom. I am a planner. Although I've worked in the events industry for nearly my entire career, I left a lot of things entirely in their hands. I gave them an idea of what I wanted and then let them do their thing – and it went perfectly. They are the professionals, let them show off their skills!

Get ready with your partner. We separated once to get dressed, but were otherwise with each other the majority of the day. It kept our nerves down and it was so fun to be able to watch things come together – together!