Beach Weddings – Montanita Style

I’ve been in Montanita just over a week now and it’s quickly become a home away from home, so much so that I ended up being invited to a wedding over the weekend!

It came about throughout a whole mash of reasons. Firstly I got chatting to a Canadian guy called Jordan in the lineup and also his Ecuadorian girlfriend Yvonne. Later on in my surf session my fellow instructor Luis paddled out and it transcended that Yvonne was in fact his sister!

It seems Montanita is a small bubble of people! 

Back on the beach after a fun afternoon of sharing waves and trying to pick up some more Spanish surf lingo they explained that Yvonne works at the Spanish school too and promptly invited me to come join their wedding celebrations over the weekend – and never one to turn down a bit of a party I gratefully accepted.

And being ever the opportunist I also enquired if they needed a photographer for the day – Jordan explained that they didn’t have enough money to cover the cost of one, but we quickly struck a deal and I landed myself an invite to the full reception including a full Ecuadorian wedding meal!

Happy days indeed!

The Big Day

I hitched a ride with Luis to the venue and was stoked to discover it was a full on beach wedding overlooking the surf – you couldn’t have picked a better back drop! As the sun set into the ocean we sat down to a beautiful seafood meal and I also discovered I was included on the list of people using the free bar…I never thought for a moment that I’d have backpacking days like this – and promptly got started on the mojitos.

The wedding crowd as you may have expected contained heaps of local surfers and people from the community so I took the time to get networking and introduce myself to the surf shop owners, have some banter with face I recognized from the lineup and even have some good drunken chit chat with my new bosses…Montanita is one of those towns where it’s not what you know but who you know – and I want in!

It was pretty succesful too with people bringing me cocktails as I snapped away, hopping from group to group and capturing the chaos the reception was slowly descending into.

To Honour...

The speeches were multi lingual and I did my best to try and keep up with the Spanish version – but a few drinks in it was proving rather difficult!

The Aussie best man speech was priceless though.

Already half cut and eccentric he raised a glass throughout to honour;

“To honour now, to honour in the future, to honour your marriage, to honour your friendship…and remember – if you cant come in her come honour”!

…the phrase lost in translation couldn’t have been more apt at this point – with the English speakers in stitches and the Spanish speakers giving a big cheers thinking it was a serious toast!

Party Time…

And from then on in the night turned into a huge beach party – with the Cabana crew and pretty much the entire population of Montanita dancing on the sand and consuming excessive amounts of nearly every drink you can imagine!

Limbo posts appeared alongside more traditional wedding games such as garter swopping…which proved extremely interesting to say the least!

Limbo Time!

Gotta Love Flower Girls

The entire beach was a mass of smiles from all nationalities and the party ran straight through to the not so early hours of the morning! After putting the camera away Luis introduced me to his half American cousin and she helped me brush up on my salsa skills some more – they even roped me into heaps of group and family shots – being rather tipsy by this point I was more than happy to get involved!

Luis Getting Involved!

…and you know it’s been an epic party when you see the bride walking around at 4am in her dress sculling tequila neat from the bottle!

Apart from a massive hangover the next day I came away from it with heaps of new buddies and a new found passion for Ecuadorian life – lets hope the next few months entail many more parties like that!

For now I shall spend the next few days trawling through the hundreds of images, editing them up and keeping a few locked away in the hard drive as cheeky drunken blackmail…everyone is being really nice to me at the moment!hahaha!

Congratulations Jordan and Yvonne!