Church and Stage
The wedding ceremony becomes grand theater, with festooned fabric framing the altar, and a carpet of pine needles flanked by floral-themed runners of tinted sawdust. The conquistadors of old may not have discovered El Dorado, but what they did find was pure gold: Guatemala. To this piece of paradise endowed with abundant natural beauty and Mayan artistry they added grand stone architecture, shady plazas and bubbling fountains. The chapel, completed in the 17th century, with its towering tiered altar and exposed stone walls, needed little decoration, but the pair of alfombras—ceremonial carpets of colored sawdust in floral designs—almost steal the show.