The Bride Wore Four Different Dresses Designed by Her Mother-in-Law for Her San Miguel de Allende Wedding
Mariel Salazar met Mauricio Tcherassi’s mother before she met him. In 2021, she went to a fitting for a friend’s wedding at the Silvia Tcherassi store in Coral Gables. To Mariel’s surprise, Silvia was there. “We ended up talking for hours in her office and Vera [Mauricio’s grandmother] and Sofia [Mauricio’s sister and director of ready-to-wear for the brand] also joined,” she says. “I left that day feeling like I had known the three of them for a lifetime.” When she returned to pick up the dress a few weeks later, Silvia asked if she could give her son Mariel’s Instagram handle. Mariel agreed, and days later, Mauricio slid into her DMs.
Mauricio says he was “immediately captivated” by Mariel on their first date. Yet he truly fell in love after he saw her around his sister and mother: “When she first came to my family’s house for lunch and I saw how naturally she related to my family and how at ease we all felt, I knew she was the one,” he says.
In June 2023, Mauricio proposed to Mariel in Capri, Italy. Mauricio, the chief operating officer of Silvia Tcherassi, had pretended they were visiting the island to check on the brand’s recently opened boutique. Secretly, he had a ring in his pocket. “I had played it out like it was just another work trip and so Mariel had absolutely no idea,” he says. “We got up very early and went to a place I had chosen a few days before as ‘the spot’ as it had the best views of the Faraglioni. It was there where I got on one knee and asked her to marry me,” he says. Afterwards, they took a boat to the Amalfi Coast, where they had a late, romantic lunch at Conca del Sogno. They returned to Capri for the sunset and dinner at Hotel Caesar Augustus.
Just shy of a year later, the two held a three-day wedding in San Miguel de Allende planned by Mauricio Kirschner of House of Kirschner. “Mexico offers such a unique culture and both of us feel a deep connection to it,” says Mauricio, noting that it’s also Mariel’s home country. “San Miguel de Allende had always interested both of us—it is a truly magical place and given its size and the familiarity that comes with a town that small, we loved that all our guests would be close to one another.”
Mariel wore Silvia Tcherassi throughout. For their welcome party at the historic art school Instituto Allende, she opted for a custom floor-length white dress paired with custom Gia Borghini gold boots embroidered with their wedding date. (The stylish yet sensible footwear came in handy, as the night soon turned into a dance party DJed by Mauricio himself.) The next day, she wore a pink sequin column dress and an Olympia Le Tan clutch for a cocktail party at Rosewood San Miguel de Allende.
On Saturday, Mariel walked down the aisle in a grand backless halter dress with floral appliques at Hacienda Luna Escondida. “I loved my wedding dress almost as much as I loved the process of its creation. Silvia showed me beautiful haute couture swatches that I fell in love with immediately and once the fabric arrived, she began to work on it,” Mariel says. “Throughout the whole process, she stressed the fact that the dress had to look good from every angle, which I of course appreciated so much. She studied the images of where the wedding would be and took everything from lighting to the natural landscape into account when designing my dress.” Mauricio waited for her at the altar in a Dior suit and gold cufflinks that once belonged to his grandfather.
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