Where Love Finds a Home
Petit Guide No. 2
Celebrating the places that have quietly become part of Puerto Vallarta’s wedding story.
PUERTO VALLARTA · RIVIERA NAYARIT · 2026
Along the coast from Mismaloya to Lo de Marcos, certain places have shaped the way people celebrate here. Some are family businesses handed down through decades. Some began as private homes and never quite stopped being them. Others take their character from art, architecture, a garden, or the people who have looked after them for years. What they share is that a wedding held there belongs to the place rather than simply happening inside it.
If you are just beginning to plan a wedding in Vallarta, think of this as a place to start. Each venue’s own website will tell you how many rooms it has, how many guests it holds and everything it offers. We wanted to tell you something else: who built these places, the families behind them, and why people keep choosing to celebrate here.
No venue paid to appear in these pages. We chose them for their depth: the story behind each place and the people who shaped it. At Petit Joys we are drawn to the heartwarming stories behind beautiful things, and every place in this guide has one. Our thanks to their owners and teams, some of whom shared their stories and photographs with us.
We travel south to north, beginning in the hills of Mismaloya and ending in the countryside at the northern edge of the region.
Every stop on this map holds its own petit joys:
a breakfast on the terrace, a dance under the palapa, a quiet hour by the sea.
The Route
- 1Villa MandarinasNear Mismaloya
- 2Casa ValerieMismaloya
- 3Casa KarmaConchas Chinas
- 4Villa VeranoConchas Chinas and Amapas
- 5Martoca Beach GardenBucerías
- 6Casa Tres SolesPunta Mita
- 7Teitiare EstateNear Sayulita
- 8Hacienda AntiguaOutside Lo de Marcos
Locations are approximate.
ONE · NEAR MISMALOYA
Villa Mandarinas
The Weekend Under One Roof
Villa Mandarinas, cascading down the cliff to the water. Photograph courtesy of Villa Mandarinas.
Villa Mandarinas is a private estate on the south shore near Mismaloya, designed and built by the architect Alberto Alvarez Valdivia when it was his own home. His work has been featured in Architectural Digest. Sixteen suites cascade down the hillside toward the ocean, enough for an entire wedding party to stay together while still sharing the privacy of one estate.
That means the whole wedding party can stay for the weekend: breakfast on the terraces, an afternoon by the water, and a dinner that runs late without anyone needing a taxi home.
Vows on the rocks above the sea, with Los Arcos beyond. Photograph courtesy of Villa Mandarinas.
Tables on the tiled terrace, set among the bougainvillea. Photograph courtesy of Villa Mandarinas.
INSTAGRAM @villamandarinas · WEBSITE villamandarinas.com
TWO · MISMALOYA
Casa Valerie
Married at Home
Casa Valerie from the air, its terraces stepping down the hillside. Photograph courtesy of Casa Valerie.
Casa Valerie began with a vacation. In 1980, Valerie and her husband came to Puerto Vallarta for a week and found themselves drawn to Mismaloya, where the hillside looks across Banderas Bay toward Los Arcos. They bought a piece of land and began building what they imagined as a retirement home. It was completed the following year with two bedrooms. Almost from the beginning, the house became the place where the family gathered: holidays, anniversaries, and, in time, weddings.
The house grew with the life inside it. In 2002, Valerie expanded it into the far larger estate that stands today, and the family connection never loosened. Her sons, Sterling and Jefferson, carry the house forward now. Both were married at Casa Valerie themselves.
Today Casa Valerie sits high in the hills of Mismaloya, with the bay, Los Arcos, and the coastline spread below. A couple celebrating here steps into a house that has been marking marriages and gatherings for more than forty years.
Everything about the house has changed since the first two bedrooms were finished. The reason people gather inside it has not.
The house at golden hour, high above the bay. Photograph courtesy of Casa Valerie.
A ceremony under white flowers, the islands on the horizon. Photograph courtesy of Casa Valerie.
Late in the evening, someone always ends up in the pool. Photograph courtesy of Casa Valerie.
INSTAGRAM @casa_valerie · WEBSITE casavalerie.com
THREE · CONCHAS CHINAS
Casa Karma
Beside the Labyrinth
The labyrinth, with the white villa rising behind it. Photograph courtesy of Casa Karma.
Casa Karma is a place shaped by choices. Its owner, Georgia, speaks about owning the property in terms of stewardship rather than entitlement, an idea that has influenced the way the house has grown and the way people are welcomed into it. When a neighboring parcel became available years after Georgia and her late husband, Gholi, acquired Casa Karma, she chose to make it part of the gathering place the property was becoming.
The event space was built across three levels rather than as one large room, so guests move through the property as the day changes. A ceremony can take place on one level before the celebration shifts to another. Oceanfront terraces open toward Banderas Bay, while gardens, quiet corners and a deep collection of works by the artist Marta Gilbert give people places to pause between the larger moments.
The labyrinth sits on the neighboring parcel. Georgia created it, inspired by the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral and by her longstanding interest in labyrinths as walking meditation, and it is registered with The Labyrinth Society.
When Georgia was asked what piece of Puerto Vallarta she hoped couples would take home with them, her answer was simple: “The love of the people.” She has said that without its staff, Casa Karma would be only a pretty building.
The labyrinth from above, beside the cove and the open sea. Photograph courtesy of Casa Karma.
Oleander in bloom in front of the house. Photograph courtesy of Casa Karma.
Breakfast by the pool, with the bay beyond. Photograph courtesy of Casa Karma.
INSTAGRAM @casakarmaprivatevilla · WEBSITE casakarmapv.com
FOUR · CONCHAS CHINAS AND AMAPAS
Villa Verano
A House That Never Forgot It Was a Home
A round floral arch on the sand, framing the bay. Photograph courtesy of Villa Verano.
Long before destination weddings became part of Puerto Vallarta’s identity, Villa Verano had already found its purpose. It was built as a private retreat for family and friends. That origin still matters. Villa Verano was not first imagined as a venue. It was imagined as a place to gather.
The estate still carries that feeling. Set above a private beach in Conchas Chinas, with jungle, terraces, a palm garden, and wide views of Banderas Bay, Villa Verano offers the kind of privacy that makes a wedding weekend feel fully inhabited. Guests do not simply arrive for an event. They settle in.
Its strongest beauty may be the way it allows time to stretch. Families can share breakfast before the ceremony. Friends can drift between the pool, beach, and terraces. Even the wedding itself becomes one chapter in a larger weekend, one that feels less like a scheduled production and more like a gathering that has slowly come to life.
Villa Verano reminds us that some places become memorable not because they feel grand, but because they feel generous. It is a house that has welcomed people for decades, and somehow it still seems to remember why it was built.
A long table in the palm garden, waiting for its guests. Photograph courtesy of Villa Verano.
The lounge terrace above the beach. Photograph courtesy of Villa Verano.
INSTAGRAM @veranopv · WEBSITE villaverano.com
FIVE · BUCERÍAS
Martoca Beach Garden
Where the Sea Touches
The long table under the flowered pergola, facing the bay. Photograph courtesy of Martoca Beach Garden.
Carol left Oklahoma to study Spanish for a master’s in teaching. As her son Jimmy tells it, she never went home again, except for vacations. The reason was Javier, a rancher from Mexico City who had built an egg business and grown tired of the city. Carol likes to say she fell in love with the chicken man.
In the 1970s they sold everything, gathered up their two boys, Frankie, who was seven, and Jimmy, who was five, and went exploring an untouched stretch of coast north of Vallarta, looking for a spot for a bed and breakfast. They found one where the doors stood so close to the Pacific that they named it La Mar Toca: the sea touches. It opened in 1979.
The family ran bungalows, boat tours, and a restaurant there for years, until storms took their toll and the original buildings were lost. The family adapted. In 2010, Martoca Beach Garden was formally born as a private, full-service wedding venue in Bucerías.
The lawn, pool and beach from above, the dance floor outlined in light. Photograph courtesy of Martoca Beach Garden.
The garden answers one of the quiet problems of a beach wedding: how to keep the ocean close without asking everyone to spend the evening sinking into sand. The Pacific stays within reach, but there is grass underfoot and a garden around the celebration.
Today Jimmy and his nephew Eric, Frankie’s son, look after it, and Carol and Javier, now 84, still live next door. They love the music every weekend, Jimmy says, and the gossip about the speeches. “We are just locals with a large back yard,” he says, “that we lucked out of having and sharing.”
A canopy of lights over the lawn at dusk. Photograph courtesy of Martoca Beach Garden.
Candlelit tables as the bay turns pink. Photograph courtesy of Martoca Beach Garden.
INSTAGRAM @martocabeachgarden · WEBSITE martoca.mx
SIX · PUNTA MITA
Casa Tres Soles
Built in Conversation with Mexico
The pool and the great palapa. Photograph by Jorge Kick.
Casa Tres Soles was designed by the Mexican architects Juan Collignon Hoff and Manolo Mestre to open the house to its setting. Tall windows and wide sliding doors open the rooms to the gardens, the pool and the bay, so that inside and outside run into one another. Under the great open-air palapa, the house keeps a room that belongs as much to the breeze as to the walls.
Up close, Mexico appears in the materials. Huanacaxtle, the golden hardwood of this coast, shapes the large pieces of furniture and the smallest details. Bright, graphic textiles bring color to the furniture and the walls.
Vows can be spoken in the gardens above the Pacific, dinner can gather at the long table overlooking the bay, and the evening can settle under the palapa, where the house and the night air meet.
The ocean is always there beyond the terraces. But turn back toward the house and there is a second view: a home made from the woods, colors and open air of Mexico.
Vows in the garden above the Pacific. Photograph by Jorge Kick.
The stepping stones to the house. Photograph by Jorge Kick.
A long table under the lanterns. Photograph by Jorge Kick.
A walk along the beach after the ceremony. Photograph by Jorge Kick.
INSTAGRAM @casatressoles · WEBSITE casatressoles.com
SEVEN · NEAR SAYULITA
Teitiare Estate
Where Two Shores Meet
A long table beside the infinity edge, above the sea. Photograph courtesy of Teitiare Estate.
A short drive from Sayulita, Teitiare Estate sits above a private beach with a story that begins on the far side of the ocean it faces. Johann Ackermann and his wife, the fashion photographer Anne Menke, found this stretch of coast in 2000, after years of traveling the world and falling for Mexico a little more on every trip. In 2005 they left New York for good, and Johann built the estate from the ground up with architect Jean Claude Galibert, in a language of stone, wood, and palapa, filled with pieces the family gathered over years of travel through the South Pacific and Africa.
The names tell you where their hearts had been. The family loves Tahiti and has traveled there extensively, so everything on the property carries a Tahitian name: Casa O’Te Miti, House of the Pacific; Casa Ninamu, the Blue House. And the estate itself is Teitiare: Sea of Flowers.
The estate from the air, above its private beach. Photograph courtesy of Teitiare Estate.
The palapa and pool at twilight. Photograph courtesy of Teitiare Estate.
Teitiare took its name from the islands its founders loved on the far side of the Pacific. Years later, on another shore, the name found a home of its own.
WEBSITE teitiare.com
EIGHT · OUTSIDE LO DE MARCOS
Hacienda Antigua at Rancho Escondido
A Hacienda Made of Many Histories
Dinner on the hilltop as the sun goes down. Photograph by Eva Šica of Ave Sol Photography.
Hacienda Antigua is not an old hacienda in the usual sense. It is a new house that old things came home to. Between 2006 and 2013, the owners traveled across Mexico in search of pieces that had already lived long lives somewhere else, and gave each one a place on a hilltop just outside Lo de Marcos. Every piece arrived with its own story, and it still carries that story here.
The hand-carved stone entryway once welcomed worshippers to a church in Guadalajara. The rose cantera arches of the courtyard stood for two hundred years at a hacienda in the farmland outside Tepatitlán, Jalisco. The paving stones underfoot were chiseled in the eighteenth century and first laid in the streets of Dolores Hidalgo. There are century-old doors from Zacatecas, a railing that began its life as a church banister, floors made from railroad ties found in San Miguel de Allende, and a carved stone fountain from an old Puerto Vallarta restaurant, saved just before the building came down.
The hacienda sits at the top of Rancho Escondido, a private twelve-acre ranch, looking out over the jungle to the sea. The coast is only five minutes away and always in sight, but a wedding here belongs to the countryside, to its courtyards and lawns, its stone, timber and iron.
The gates open onto the cobbled drive. Photograph courtesy of Hacienda Antigua.
A kiss beneath the arcade. Photograph courtesy of Hacienda Antigua.
The tables after dark, under strings of light. Photograph by Eva Šica of Ave Sol Photography.
INSTAGRAM @haciendaantigua · WEBSITE haciendaantigua.com
With Thanks
Thank you to the families and teams of all eight places, and to the photographers whose pictures appear here: Jorge Kick (jorgekick.com · @jorgekickfoto) and Eva Šica of Ave Sol Photography (avesol.mx · @avesolphotography).
A Note from Petit Joys
When You Find Your Place
If this guide helps you find the place where you eventually celebrate, we would love to send a little something for the occasion. Couples who discover and book one of these places through the guide receive a complimentary Petit Joys welcome gift for their weekend.
The gift is simply our way of celebrating the moment a couple finds the place where their people will gather.
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