Some love stories take their time. Sarah Istel and David Shay's took four texts, one padel-tournament ruse, and a beach in Los Cabos to become official.
Their destination wedding at Four Seasons Costa Palmas in Los Cabos, Mexico, was just featured in Vogue — an editorial-caliber celebration built on vintage glamour and beachside energy, captured over a full weekend that moved through five distinct moments captured by the MCW Photocinema team.
Pizza & Tacos Night
The weekend opened with a relaxed pizza and tacos night for family and friends arriving in Los Cabos from around the world. Long tables were set up under string lights, with a taco stand doing double duty as the night's centerpiece and its main source of entertainment. After months of wedding planning, it was the first chance for both families to actually sit down together — no seating charts, no schedule, just good food and an early preview of the weekend ahead.
Featured in Vogue: A Los Cabos Wedding Weekend at Four Seasons Costa Palmas
Tennis Tournament
The next day brought a tennis tournament at Four Seasons Costa Palmas, with guests taking a break from beach mode for a few rounds on the court. Some came dressed for the occasion in full tennis whites, others showed up more for the trophy photos than the actual competition. Either way, it turned into one of the more unexpectedly fun parts of the weekend — a low-stakes excuse for guests who hadn't met yet to pair up and get to know each other before the main event.
Welcome Party
The welcome party included a sunset boat ride around Costa Palmas before the group gathered on land for the first night all together. Dressed-up and slightly windblown from the water, guests traded stories from the day over drinks as the sun dropped behind the marina. It set the tone for the rest of the weekend: dressed-up but never stiff, with just enough structure to bring everyone together before the wedding day itself.
Ceremony & Reception
Sarah walked down a sand aisle lined with white parasols in a vintage 1990s Valentino gown sourced from Raffe Vintage, wearing her grandmother's bracelet — a piece that survived her flight from France during World War II. The ceremony gave way to cocktail hour and a candlelit reception at Four Seasons Costa Palmas, planned by Lee de Lange and Adilenne Rodríguez.
After-Brunch
The morning after, the celebration shifted into pool-party mode — green juices, sunshine, and one last easy day together in Los Cabos before everyone headed home. Guests who'd danced the night before showed up in swimsuits instead of suits, trading toasts for poolside conversations that ran long into the afternoon. It was the kind of unstructured, no-agenda gathering that only really works on the last day of a destination wedding, when nobody's in a rush to be anywhere else.
Five days, one Los Cabos sunset after another — pizza nights, a tennis tournament, a wedding on the sand, and a brunch that turned into a pool party. That's the wedding Vogue fell for, and the one we got to shoot.
Read the full feature on Vogue.