Nothing is as scary as getting married in a cave.

Halloween in Mexico 1993

There are good Mexico days and bad Mexico days. I was having a bad Mexico day. Perhaps it was the scorpion on the inside of the shower curtain while I showered. Maybe it was the make-shift flame thrower of a Bic lighter and can of hairspray needed to kill the cockroaches. Maybe it’s because I left home almost three months ago to a place where I did not know the language or culture. Maybe because the day ended in “why”. Why was I here?

Bad Mexico days make you question every decision you made up to this point.

That day also happened to be February 14. Valentine’s Day. Hallmark had not found its way to the Caribbean coast. Chocolates? No chocolatier. Hell, Hershey’s Kisses had not even been in stores yet. But that afternoon Gary got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. Secretly I believed it was because I was crying and he had not thought of a gift.

He had chosen Valentine’s so he’d remember the date.

Of course I said yes. Yes, because we renovated the house in Baltimore together. Yes, we relocated to a foreign country together. Yes, he was my exploration partner and we knew we had each other’s back.

There was no ring for the moment. His mom’s ring sat in a safety deposit box in Baltimore.

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We picked Halloween as the wedding date. I always said because getting married is fucking scary. Gary picked it because it was his grandfather’s birthday. And it was also just before Mexico’s Día de los Muertos, Day of the Dead. So why the hell not.

We wanted to be married in a cave. Of course it is hard to get a justice of the peace or clergyman into an underwater cave. We picked the cenote that would look beautiful in the photos.

Invitations were sent to the printer.

Then our friend Buddy offered to build us a platform over the water at Dos Ojos. We’d been exploring that cave system. A huge cenote, drip-stone covered in moss and mold, clear blue water, mot-mots calling, a true hidden-world feeling. On the invites, all 15 of them, I crossed out the original location and penned in Dos Ojos.

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The process of getting married in Mexico is through a justice of the peace. We went to the Registro Civil (Civil Registry Office) in Playa. It was a lengthy document, in Spanish. Typed out on a real typewriter with real carbon paper and kept in the municipal records in a bitácora. Now this document is probably the biggest fuck up I made in Mexico. And it all has to do with my name. I did my name wrong on the form. Maiden name, mother’s last name, and Walten. I have many aliases in Mexico. That is part of the reason I still go by Walten today. Undoing it in two countries isn’t worth it.

The other box we checked wrong was who owns what. If we own things in “common” or separate. We could not read Spanish. We just took our best guess, and checked the box. At that time we owned nothing but the dive gear we arrived with, so did not over think the decision. Blood tests done.

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Destination weddings were not a thing, so we did not invite people from abroad. We could not justify asking people to fly in for a wedding in the jungle. The only exception was my parents. Who also served as a mule, to smuggle in bottles of champagne from the States. I bought a small bouquet from the only florist in Cancun for $40. A guy hawking silver at the top of the hotel zone in Cancun sold us wedding bands, $12. Still in a drawer somewhere. And a cake from the only bakery in Playa, $30. That was 50% of our wedding budget.

By October, we had moved to Akumal, a beachside village with eleven full-time residents. The people who worked at the hotel in town lived in Mayan villages in the Yucatán, Katunil and Sotuta, and went home to their families by bus or colectivo, once a month.

The morning of the wedding I drank a Bartles and James wine cooler for breakfast, overlooking Half Moon Bay from our condo at Las Iguanas. Calming my jitters. And there waiting was the mother of the bride in a tropical print outfit, with pretty sandals. I marched her right around and told her to put on her jungle shoes. The jungle is no place for pretty sandals.

Me waving from the truck, parking area at Dos Ojos, 1993.

Cenote Dos Ojos lies about halfway between the village of Akumal and Tulum. About two kilometers into the jungle. Today you can drive right up to it. Back then there was a very rough road not made for cars. Our friend Buddy, part inventor, part zen disciple, built jungle road warrior trucks. Frankensteins of the automotive world. We loaded the wedding party up into the back end of two trucks and headed out to the cenote, where Buddy had built the platform over the water. We were the first people to be married there. And maybe still the only.

Of course the JOP was late. No one warned him he had to hike two clicks into the jungle. We had to tip him extra for the hike.

Our witnesses, the JOP, and German Mendoza a friend translating on the right.

There were about 10 people there along with my parents. Most everyone was a cave diver. Someone brought a plus-one. Gloria. Originally from Havana, she offered to sing a Spanish love song. A cappella, her voice rose up into the dark where the lights didn’t reach. My dad toasted Gary, called him a gentle man, then toasted us. Even the toughest cave divers had a tear in their eye.

Our wedding guests.

Once back by the highway, a woman in a huipil was waiting with her young son. He walked up to me with a handful of wildflowers he had picked, and handed them over. I gave him a kiss on the cheek as thanks.

The reception was at La Lunita in Akumal. The restaurant was not open yet for the season, but Annette the owner extended an invitation to host us and our ragtag wedding party. A tiny skeleton bride and groom sat on top of the cake as we did the celebratory mordida, “the bite” where we try to shove each other’s face into the cake.

The mordida.

Gary and I were married more than twenty years. I can’t tell you the year we divorced. Divorced in the US, still married in Mexico. We weren’t going to pay two sets of lawyers in two countries, and there was a better reason than that. If anything happened to either one of us in Mexico, the only people they let into the ICU are spouses.

My ring. It was beautiful, and I had it for years. Kept it in our safe so I would not lose it diving. I still wish I had it. A safe is only safe if it doesn’t get stolen. One of the many times we were robbed, they took the safe, and the ring inside it.

What remains from our wedding aside from the story are images stuck together in an old wedding album, sitting in a Texas storage locker. Of course my dad, proud of his oldest daughter, would always show friends and family his favorite photo from that day. Me squatting in the jungle with my skirt hiked up, peeing. His daughter is in her element.

Missed the reception?

What's the strangest wedding you've been to? Tell me in the comments.

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There are more stories on the way. Pull up a chair.