Studio · · 5 min read
Inside the studio: how we build a design story
From a first conversation to a materials board to a courtyard full of marigolds, here's how design happens at Altamar.
Marisol Vega · Founder & Creative Director
People assume design starts with a mood board. Ours starts with two conversations and a plane ticket.
The first conversation is about you
Not colours. We ask how you met, what your grandmother’s house smelled like, what the best party you’ve ever been to felt like at midnight, and what you’re most afraid the wedding will turn into. That last one is usually the most useful: “a Pinterest wedding” and “a stuffy hotel wedding” lead to very different rooms.
The second conversation is with the place
We go and stand in the venue at the time of day the event will happen. A hacienda’s arches throw a particular shadow at 6pm. A Cabo terrace has a wind you can set your watch by. Oaxaca’s convent walls are already the colour of turmeric and any palette that fights them will lose. The place tells us the structure; you tell us the story.
The materials board
Then, and only then, we build the board. It is physical: swatches of Teotitlán wool, a shard of black clay, a hand-blown glass, a marigold, a strip of the ribbon the menus will be tied with. We ship it to you in a box. A screen flattens everything; you should be able to hold the wedding in your hands.
The system
From the board we build a system that runs across every event of the weekend. The welcome party gets the loose, bright end of the palette; the ceremony the pale, quiet end; the dinner the deep, candlelit middle. Stationery, signage, floral, linens and lighting all pull from the same few materials, which is why our weekends look like one thing rather than three.
The production drawing
Every idea becomes a drawing Camila’s team can build from: the ceiling grid for 3,000 marigolds, the rigging plan for the bulbs, the load-in schedule for a courtyard with one door. This is the unglamorous part and the reason the glamorous part works.
What we’re proud of
That people can’t quite place where the design came from. It isn’t “Tulum wedding” or “hacienda wedding.” It’s yours, in that place, on that evening, and it couldn’t have happened anywhere else.
