MEXICO

Mexico rewards different kinds of travelers in different ways. The Mexico of the Riviera Maya is all turquoise water, limestone cenotes, and resort architecture that frames the sea like a painting. The Mexico of Los Cabos is desert meeting ocean — stark, dramatic, and full of a different kind of beauty. Both have earned their reputations as among the finest places in the world to mark a significant occasion.

Along the Yucatán Peninsula, Playa del Carmen and Tulum anchor a stretch of coastline where the properties have grown increasingly sophisticated. Excellence, Karisma, and the Hard Rock resorts here have developed wedding programs with serious attention to detail. The water is shallow and calm, the sand is white, and on a clear morning the horizon looks painted. For couples planning a destination wedding, this corridor offers more resort options at more price points than anywhere else in the Caribbean-Mexico market.

Tulum occupies a different register. The ruins perched above the sea, the cenote swimming, the jungle centering everything — it carries a particular atmosphere that larger resort towns do not. More boutique properties, smaller ceremonies, and a setting that feels genuinely ancient and alive at the same time.

Los Cabos sits at the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula where the Pacific and the Sea of Cortez meet. The landscape is unlike anything else in Mexico. Desert hillsides drop to rocky shoreline. Whales breach offshore in winter. The resorts here — Waldorf Astoria, One&Only, Pueblo Bonito — rank among the finest in North America, and sunset over El Arco, the stone arch that marks the meeting of two seas, is something you carry home with you.

Wherever you land in Mexico, the food is the constant. Not resort food, but the taquería around the corner, the ceviche made at noon with fish caught that morning, the mole that took three days to build. Mexico's culinary tradition is one of the most complex in the world, and even a short trip leaves a mark on you through your appetite.