San Pancho wedding blog

This Thanksgiving I attended the best wedding ever, excepting my own, of course.

Some of what made it great was that it was in San Pancho, a great wedding destination.

Here are some excerpts from the groom’s father’s blog. Thanks,  Tom Cook, for your view of San Pancho.

“San Francisco, nicknamed San Pancho, is a little town of about a thousand, on the Pacific Ocean an hour north of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.  It is a beautiful place to get married.  Our son Ben and his sweetheart Erin invited fifty lucky folks to witness and participate in their wedding this past Thanksgiving.  Instead of a holiday of tepid turkey, dry stuffing, surly relatives, and endless football games, we enjoyed a moving, joyful ceremony on the beach at sunset.

…..Organizationally I would have difficulty getting three couples together for a pot luck.  Erin and Ben planned, coordinated and hosted a stupendous week in a foreign country 2,000 miles away.  Their younger friends went snorkeling, horseback riding on the beach, and exploring the local night life.  They also lined up enough adventure and challenge to delight the crew of potentially grumpy old people.  There were welcome parties, swimming in an infinity pool a hundred feet above the ocean, a rehearsal dinner, lunches, and free time (read naps) for those so inclined…..

I hesitate to draw attention to San Pancho.  While some ex-pats blend right in, there are the gauche, like the gringo who had a private 9 hole golf course built for his own very occasional use.  The economic slowdown has derailed a number of planned developments.  In one case there is a wrought iron gate supported by impressive stone arches.  Alas it is not protecting anything, but one day it will be very exclusive.

The local Mexican community seems to take the boom and bust in stride.  The only bridge into town was washed out in the last (September) rains.  Fortunately the river is dry now and cars  can make it through the gully.  It seems that the twenty founding families have intermarried and make up most of the one thousand residents.  The next generation simply finds an unoccupied portion of family land and without benefit of building codes or inspection, builds a small home.

The pace is slow.  Everybody knows everybody.  The pool man’s sister is a nurse. She can send her husband, who works at the restaurant you ate at last night, on an errand to get you the medicine you need.  The tailor is married to the house keeper whose brother is a mechanic who can fix the flat tire you got attempting to navigate the cobblestone road.  The informal network of goods and services puts Craig’s List to shame………”