For Some Couples, Marrying on Super Bowl Weekend Is a Win

In weddings, as in football, the will to win may be nothing without the will to prepare. That’s why Laura Arvizu and Robert Marquez, of Paso Robles, California, started planning their wedding in Mexico 14 months ago.

“We wanted the destination wedding of our dreams,” said Arvizu, 28, a sales manager at a company that makes software for wineries. “But we also wanted our guests not to miss out on an American holiday.” That is, Super Bowl LVIII, taking place in Las Vegas on Sunday.

The couple found their way out of that conflict zone by choosing a resort with amenities to accommodate both events. On Friday, she and Marquez, 31, a sales associate at a winery, married on the beach at Unico Riviera Maya. On Sunday, 65 wedding guests will join them for an outdoor viewing party at the same resort.

Most of their friends supported their idea of a joint celebration of the couple and the game. Normally, she said, she and her guests might be at a friend’s house eating Cheetos. This year, “we’ll have a waiter bringing us margaritas.” But not everyone could make it. “We did have a couple of people tell us, ‘I’m going to the Super Bowl and I’m so sorry,’” she said. Still, she added, “it worked out for us.”

That’s not always the case for couples who plan their nuptials for the same weekend as the biggest sporting event in the country. Some people on the internet flatly condemn same-day Super Bowl weddings, and those who have them often end up wringing their hands with worry. Leanne Bybee, a wedding planner based in the San Francisco Bay Area, advises her clients against combining both into one weekend.

“I tell people, ‘Do not do this,’” Bybee said, as it can lead to uncertain guest counts. “People could totally cancel at the last minute on you if their team makes it to the Super Bowl and they’re die-hard fans.” She added that the big game could be distracting and draw attention away from the couple’s big day. Once, early in her career, she hosted a wedding the day before the Super Bowl.

“Everyone was super jazzed about it,” she recalled. “But then everywhere I looked, the conversation wasn’t ‘Oh, look at the bride’s dress’ or ‘Look at how happy the couple is.’ It was: ‘Who’s placing your bets? Who do you think is going to be MVP of the game? What’s the first commercial going to be?’”

But for Mickdya Bell and Alex Lenza, who will marry on Monday in St. Petersburg, Florida, where they live, that’s sort of the point. “We’re having a very casual wedding, and we want people to have things to talk about,” Bell said. “We’ll probably be talking about the Super Bowl ourselves.”

Those conversations will take place at Green Bench Brewing Company, a local microbrewery, where the couple will host a private watch party and marry the next day in a lush beer garden. Bell, 39, is the marketing director at Green Bench and a Dallas Cowboys fan, while Lenza, 38, is a carpenter who grew up rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles. Their wedding comes with a built-in perk for football fans: “They can watch the Super Bowl and they don’t have to get up and go to work the next day because they’re coming to our wedding,” Bell said.

Another benefit is that guests — particularly out-of-towners, who make up half of the couple’s 150-person guest list — will have a guaranteed place to watch the game. The brewery will close at 6 p.m. Sunday for the watch party. “We didn’t want people to have to scramble to find a bar or cram into a hotel room to watch,” she said. “We’ll have a big projection screen and Pub subs and chicken tendies and watch amongst barrels of beer.”

Ashley Morris, a destination wedding specialist who worked with Arvizu and Marquez to find a Super Bowl-friendly resort, said that Mexico and the Caribbean had become magnets for Super Bowl destination weddings in recent years.

“It’s a bigger deal there than you would think,” she said. “Most resorts will have a party, and there’s always a special food-and-drink scene happening around the teams, and sometimes music and entertainment.” The appeal is obvious to her. “It checks all the boxes,” she said. “It’s warm weather, people are thinking of Super Bowl weekend as a time for celebration anyway, and you can have a party you don’t have to plan for.”

But some wedding experts, including Slomique L. Hawrylo, the owner of Carpe Diem Events, still advise against it. Like Bybee, Hawrylo doesn’t like to see anyone’s bridal thunder stolen by a sporting event. But she has seen it happen at weddings before, especially those where guests fall under familiar gender stereotypes.

“Even if it’s the weekend of the college basketball playoffs, not even the Super Bowl, I won’t be able to keep the attention of the men in the room,” she said. “No woman wants that. And men don’t want to have to stay in a hotel the night before the game. It becomes a thing.”

Other guests, however, may be less interested in the game and more intrigued by the baked-in romance between pop star Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, a Kansas City Chiefs tight end. “I have a lot of Swiftie friends who don’t care at all about football,” Bell said. “They’re just coming to watch Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce” at the viewing party Sunday.

In Mexico, most of Arvizu’s guests and bridal party — not to mention her new husband, Marquez — will be rooting for the San Francisco 49ers. But for Arvizu as a newlywed, a nod at the famous couple’s romance seems fitting. “I’ll be wearing my red lipstick with my bikini,” she said. And, though she said she hates to admit it, the couple may have even inspired her to root for the Chiefs.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .