Why Nosara
Most couples who marry in Nosara have never stood here before they choose it.
They have seen photographs of a long beach on the Pacific side of the Nicoya Peninsula, and they are trying to answer something a photograph cannot: what it is like to bring the people they love somewhere they have not been.
This page is our honest attempt at that answer.
A place that sets its own pace
Nosara sits on the Pacific coast of the Nicoya Peninsula, in Guanacaste. The jungle runs down to the sand. Howler monkeys start before the alarms do. There are no high-rise hotels and no strip of clubs, and many of the roads are dirt, which visitors notice first and, before long, come to like.
What that means for a wedding is pace. The sunset ends up setting the evening instead of the clock. Shoes come off. Dinner runs long because nobody is hurrying to the next thing.
In Nosara, you hear what you're thinking and feel what you're feeling. It's a chance to reconnect with yourself.
Stacie Brown
Who this suits, and who it does not
It suits
Couples who want their guests to take part in the weekend rather than attend a wedding. People who would rather hold one long table than move a crowd between venues. People who are comfortable somewhere beautiful and not especially polished, and who like that their friends have to travel a little to reach it.
It does not suit
If you are picturing one large resort that holds the whole group, a walkable strip of restaurants and nightlife, or a weekend that asks nothing of your guests in the way of travel, Nosara is the wrong fit, and another part of Costa Rica is the right one. We plan here and along the surrounding Nicoya coast and nowhere else. That is a limit, and it is why we can tell you now rather than in month seven.
Stacie has written more on this: Is Nosara the right destination for your wedding?
Small properties, not one big hotel
There are no large resorts in Nosara. Lodging is villas and boutique hotels, most of them small, many run by the people who own them. That changes how a wedding weekend is built.
Instead of one room block, most couples end up with a handful of properties: a villa that holds both families, a small hotel for the friends, a few rentals for the people who want a kitchen and their own mornings. It takes more coordinating than a resort does, and it gives you a weekend where your guests are staying in places that could only be here.
Keeping that map straight is our work. Who is where, which house hosts the welcome dinner, who needs a car and who does not.
Arriving
Guests fly into one of two international airports, Liberia (LIR) or San José (SJO). Liberia is about two and a half hours away by road, San José closer to four and a half. Where the flight schedule allows, an afternoon arrival is easier on people than a late one, because the last stretch is dirt and it is better met in daylight.
There is also a small airstrip at Nosara. Sansa and Costa Rica Green Airways fly in, about forty five minutes from San José and fifteen from Liberia. The planes are small and the baggage limits are strict, near thirty pounds a person, which is worth knowing before somebody packs a dress.
Once you have a date, we send every guest a short travel form. It tells us who lands when, at which airport, and who needs a transfer, so shuttles are grouped and waiting rather than improvised.
Getting around
Nosara is spread out. The beach, the town and the hilltop houses are separate places joined by dirt roads. In green season those roads want four wheel drive, and a rental car is not always the right answer for someone who has just flown in.
So transport here is not a line on the budget. It is part of the plan: shuttles for each event, drivers who know these roads, and timing built on the fact that distance does not predict drive time.
The season shapes the weekend
January through March is the dry season. It carries the highest likelihood of sun, the town is at its liveliest, and it is also peak travel, so lodging books earlier and flights cost more.
May through August and November are green season. The jungle is vibrant, the days are cooler, the pace slows and lodging rates are kinder. Rain is part of it, though it rarely rains all day. More often there is sun for most of the day, a shower in the afternoon or evening, and then the sunset comes back. Nosara has covered venues, open-air terraces and room to tent a reception, so we design with the season rather than against it.
We do not recommend September or October. Those are historically the wettest months on the Nicoya Peninsula and the likeliest to disrupt guest travel, and the concern is not only the ceremony. It is the arrival day, the welcome party, the excursions and the farewell brunch.
The days around the wedding
Much of what your guests will remember is not on the timeline. They surf for the first time. They take a morning yoga class. They book a fishing charter, walk into the jungle, sit still for a treatment, or eat a long dinner cooked by a chef at the house.
That is the part of Nosara that does the work. Your guests go home having had a holiday, not having attended an event, which is why we leave gaps in the schedule on purpose.
Nosara asks something of the people who come here. A longer drive, a dirt road, a shower in July. What it gives back is a weekend that could not have happened anywhere else.
