RELAX

Weddings, honeymoons and romantic getaways

Puerto de la Cruz makes you fall in love

You don’t have to travel to the center of France to get drunk with love. Puerto de la Cruz has everything to make you pulse just like Cupid and fall in love with its streets, people and landscape, but above all, so you can celebrate that love more than ever.

It is one of the favorite cities to organize the wedding that you will never forget, as this city offers everything you need so that that day stops being a dream and becomes a reality.

It is also an ideal honeymoon destination, with numerous hotels that think of every last detail so your stay is a pure outpouring of love, without having to spend a significant budget.

And why not? It can also be a wonderful place to declare your love, or simply for a romantic getaway, one of those that leave a mark.

You just have to be ready to fall in love and Puerto de la Cruz will take care of everything else.

Your dream wedding

If you are one of the fortunate ones that has found love, this city offers you a never ending set of possibilities so that you can organize your wedding here, with many companies related to the bridal sector that will help you to prepare an unforgettable day in full color of details.

You have at your disposal many four or five star hotels which are the perfect space for a celebration that suits your needs, whether you are one of those who prefers a family ceremony or a party in style.

If you rather take advantage of any of the natural settings that the municipality provides, Puerto de la Cruz will surprise you with an altar made to measure so you will say I do wherever you prefer, by the sea, in one of its gardens that fill everything with color or from the top of a mountain, in a viewpoint with endless views of the coast.

Moreover, the municipal councilors of the local city hall are enchanted to officiate these ceremonies and will contribute with a personal and emotional touch to the marriage bond.

You can choose any other environment that is not in the municipal offices. Our councilors will travel to your favorite corner to make this day one of the happiest of your life.

Puerto de la Cruz has  professionals in the field very engaged with this important job, whether in hairstyling as in fashion, makeup, jewelry, flower ornaments, photography, wedding planner, catering and artists that will make an unforgettable day.

Besides, the city annually hosts a bridal fashion show in which you will be able to get inspiration from to design your wedding dress or groom suit for the occasion.

Your honeymoon

After the wedding hustle, the time to relax and enjoy your partner in the city of love comes. Let yourself be seduced by the calm, the caresses of the sea and the ripple of the streets which invite you to stroll while you enjoy the urban art.

If adventure is your plan, you can choose from many offers that will take you surfing, climbing, diving, paragliding and many other activities to enjoy the pure air.

You can also relax in a lounger at the hotel or by the beach, dine in the restaurants that the city offers, visit museums and promenade between gardens.

You have many plans to choose from, so fill your days of experiences that you want to toast for the start of this exciting vital project.

Romantic getaway

If you are thinking about giving yourself that much-desired romantic getaway with your partner, don’t think about it more and choose Puerto de la Cruz as that romantic destination that you’re looking for.

Choose the days in your calendar and press off to disconnect from everything and connect, more than ever, with your partner. These days make the perfect gift to intensify that flame or simply, to enjoy 100% together, far from the rush, compromises and daily chores.

It is time to break the monotony with a few days of rest that you will never forget.

The hotels of this city have romantic packages designed to make your stay unique, but if you prefer some more action, Puerto de la Cruz can also give to you.

There are many plans at your reach to discover the city, at the same time that you rediscover love.

Real stories

A summer party love

The local Marianela Hernández is well-known thanks to her blog, Marilyn’s Closet, where she registers more than 30.000 monthly visits. A passion that has been translated into success because of her special way of storytelling and portraying the environment around her. This is attested by his 90.000 followers on Instagram.

Little could the nine year old Marianela, when she met Arturo Armada at her cousin’s wedding, that that kind boy who dressed very formally and wore a ‘grown ups’ watch would one day become her husband.

‘We met each other little by little. During the summers we met each day with other kids from Puerto de la Cruz in San Telmo’s Beach, the most traditional and picturesque bathing area of ​​the city. I must have been 13 or 14 years old when I realized that I was platonically in love with him’, Marianela explains. ‘He was handsome, smart, polite, but he was 4 years older than me and the difference felt like an abyss’ she points out.

Arturo studied Law and Business Administration in Madrid and they would only meet during holidays. They texted every now and then via Messenger and exchanged some emails as friends. And so came the summer of 2006. Just a few days before Marianela came of age, in the middle of Puerto de la Cruz July parties, he decided to steal a kiss while dancing with her in the Baile de Magos. Marianela turned her face away. ‘I don’t know what went through my mind. I guess that I just got braces and I was embarrassed, or maybe it was that my dream was becoming true and I didn’t know how to confront it. I fully rejected him”, she remembers.

He kept trying to kiss her during the entire week, until he got it. It was Friday 14th of July outside Marianela’s home. A date they both have engraved on their memory.

After that day, they started dating, going for walks and getting to know each other. Three weeks later they saw an old couple holding hands and Arturo whispered to her that that was how they would look when they were older. That night they started calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend and little by little they found out they were made for each other. After eight years of relationship, four of them long distance, they were married in June 2014 in the Church of Nuestra Señora de la Paz. Three children have been born from their love.

Love 2.0

Yeray González, who is 26 years old, is a young computer scientist who grew up in La Vera neighborhood, one of the most emblematic and most populated in Puerto de la Cruz. Among his hobbies is sharing on his Instagram account, which already has 13.000 followers, his passion for photography with images of the most beautiful corners of the Archipelago.

He met Urszula Tyburska by chance on social media when he was looking for a destination for his next adventure. Yeray launched a question from his account: ‘Where do you recommend I go on my next getaway?’ The young woman’s response was the one that caused her the most curiosity when she made a portrait of the island of La Palma.

Urszula arrived in the Canary Islands at the age of 13 and already feels like one more from Tenerife. At 25 years old, one less than Yeray, her accent and her connection with the way of being an islander is total. ‘I’ve been here for half my life and I think my future will always be linked to Tenerife’, she says. In her job as a tour operator for the Tenepol agency, coincidentally, she is the person who advises Polish tourists who are based in the north of the island. She accompanies them on excursions that depart from Puerto de la Cruz, visiting Masca and the Teide National Park.

The fact that Urszula’s work was linked to Puerto de la Cruz gave rise to conversions online, and the curiosity between the two led them to devirtualized each other on July 16th, the day on which, every year, the locals ship their Virgen del Carmen in a ceremony that they live with true passion. Yeray invited her to live the experience as only the locals do, and offered to be her ‘guide’ on this big day of the city’s festivities. In the surroundings of the fishing pier and the streets of the center, more than one hundred thousand people were concentrated.

Since then they have not separated. ‘It was like we had known each other our whole lives. If love at first sight exists, it must be something like that’, Yeray says. And it is that a month later they already lived together and have integrated into both families.

Love, art and tattoos

Juliana Serrano and Brenda Hernández have always been part of the landscape of La Ranilla, the fishing district of Puerto de la Cruz, one of the most picturesque, popular and lively in the city.

Little did Juliana, as a teenager, imagine when she saw the girl who was Brenda pass in front of her house, that they were both destined to share her life. For the well-known artist from Puerto de la Cruz, Brenda was just part of that imagery of Mequinez street, a picture that she has contributed to creating with her art today.

When Juliana went to Madrid for a few years to study Fine Arts and continued training as an artist, she disconnected from that postcard and from the ten-year time gap that separated them both. Brenda grew up and became one of Juliana’s little brother’s best friends. They met again when she was 22, at a party where there was a crowd of people but where only they looked at each other. Days later, Juliana looked for Brenda’s phone number. They met and three months later they were living together.

They decided to get married. They wanted to have everything in order before expanding their family. Between laughs they say that their wedding was very anecdotal. ‘The truth is that the councilor of the Puerto de la Cruz city hall expected a large display with a multitude of people, an LGTB protest wedding. But we wanted something intimate, so we presented ourselves alone with two witnesses’, they say.

They like to live their love without screaming it to the world. ‘We are a couple and our environment has accepted it and supported it at all times because of the natural way in which we express it’, they say. From their tattoo studio in Puerto de la Cruz, where they both work, they have also been able to share that art that Juliana, full of energy, later turns to her other facets of creative expression (painting, urban intervention, sculpture, set design…). With the arrival of Tiziano in her life, Brenda, with a calmer spirit, is more focused on her tattoo shop, and Juliana wants to explore new fields such as teaching. ‘The important thing is that we continue to support each other but also build our own spaces’, they explain, ‘because we are different, but we complement each other perfectly’. Like yin and yang. Protagonists of a great story that continues its course always in the same theater, Puerto de la Cruz.

A love that came from cold

Journalist Ingela Ahlbom came to visit Puerto de la Cruz in October 1961 to do a report on a well-known Swedish character who lived in the city. She didn’t return to Stockholm. She sent the article by mail and she stayed. She had fallen in love with the climate, the culture and the landscape of Tenerife and, most importantly, she had met Manuel Alfonsín, a young Galician who worked as reception manager at the Hotel Tenerife Playa.

Ingela came from a bohemian family. Her mother was Inga Bagge, a famous sculptor who studied with Picasso and whose works are exhibited in Sweden’s most prestigious museums. Her father, Bengt Ahlbom, was also a well-known journalist and writer.

Determined to reinvent herself, Ingela looked for a job as a tour guide. It was the golden age of Puerto de la Cruz and the Swedish community used to meet in Plaza del Charco. The atmosphere that existed was very festive and cordial and many mixed couples between Spanish and Swedish were formed.

After seven months of dating, the couple decided to get married in Galicia. Upon the news of the marriage, Ingela’s family requested the intervention of the Swedish consul to prevent the wedding, alleging that the young woman’s tourist visa had expired. They could not allow her to marry an ‘African’, they said.

Despite the opposition of her parents and their non-attendance, the marriage took place and they both enjoyed a beautiful ceremony in the hermitage of Las Conchas on the island of La Toja and a very special honeymoon trip, a road adventure in a sports car that took them from Galicia to Paris. The rest… are stories of a lifetime. They had three children, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. They are both over 80 years old and are still as close as the first day.

Manolo and Ingela have become two well-known and beloved characters in Puerto de la Cruz in their own right. After years running the Hotel Tenerife Playa, Manolo started and co-owned the Hotel San Telmo, providing jobs to many people from the surrounding area. Throughout his career he dedicated himself to promoting and selling the virtues of the city and did great social work through the Rotary Club. Ingela, for her part, has picked up the baton from her mother and has spent the last few years experimenting with art.

Love at first sight

The story of Sonia Suresh Lakhani and Rohit Chadha could well inspire one of those famous Bollywood movies. One of those in which the plot is marked by what they call destiny. Rohit, born and raised in Mumbai, was 18 years old when he came to Tenerife in 1993 for a holiday. His family, travelers and open-minded, encouraged him to visit and learn about other parts of the world. Thus he ended up in Puerto de la Cruz, where his uncle lived, and instantly felt hooked by the culture, landscape, climate and kindness of its people.

In Rohit’s mind, actually, it was just spending a season on the islands, but on a getaway to Gran Canaria the spark lit up. On their way to a New Year’s party with his cousin, they picked up a girl. It was Sonia, from San Fernando de Maspalomas. “It was love at first sight,” he says. “Something moved inside me and I visualized myself sharing my life with him. A crazy teenage crush on a 16-year-old girl,” she recalls. The night passed quickly, with little exchanges where they got to know each other briefly. They said goodbye and Rohit found an excuse to call her on the phone. He too had fallen in love. Soon after, he asked her out. Sonia made it a condition for him to stay in the Canary Islands. When Rohit’s parents found out about his courtship, they encouraged him to set up a business in Tenerife. The long-distance relationship, between islands, lasted seven years. Sonia’s family, of Hindu origin and very traditional, wanted their daughter to finish her studies before getting married.

He waited patiently and asked her to settle in Puerto de la Cruz, the city that he fell in love with shortly before meeting her. She did not hesitate, and in February 2000 they celebrated their wedding in style in Bombay, in the same hotel where her brothers, parents and grandparents had done it. They currently have three children and are well known in the city, where they run the Talismán jewelry chain. Their connection to the place has been such that they have hooked other members of their family. ‘I am from Gran Canaria, but I don’t want to change Puerto de la Cruz for anything”, says Sonia. Double crush for both.