When Two Worlds Meet: Mexican Wildlife Illustrations for a Wedding

When a couple decided to celebrate their union in Atlixco, Puebla — one of them Mexican, the other Spanish — I wanted to find a way to give their guests something more than a centerpiece. I wanted to give them a piece of Mexico. The real one. The wild one.

The Idea: A Bottle of Mezcal and a Story

The concept was simple but layered: each of the ten guest tables would have a bottle of Sangre de Agave mezcal at its center, dressed with a hand-illustrated card featuring a different Mexican animal. Not just any animals — species that are iconic, endangered, or deeply woven into the country’s ecological identity.

The couple’s table got the Xoloitzcuintle. It was the most colorful of the set — fitting for the people at the heart of it all

Eleven Animals, One Month, All Hand-Drawn

I spent nearly a month researching and illustrating each card. Every piece was drawn by hand — ink, watercolor, pencil — and inside each card, written in my own handwriting, were curious facts and conservation notes about each species.

The eleven animals were:

Jaguar · Prairie Dog · Maguey Bat · Xoloitzcuintle · Blue-throated Hummingbird · Golden Eagle · Cacomixtle · Axolotl · Vaquita Marina · Rattlesnake · Opossum

Each one chosen intentionally. Each one carrying a story most people at that table had never heard.

My favorite: The Opossum

If I’m honest, the tlacuache (opossum) was my favorite to illustrate. I painted her carrying her babies on her back — because that’s what they do. It felt like the right animal to include at a celebration about family, about carrying the people you love.

The Maguey Bat: A Toast Worth Making

There’s something poetic about pairing the maguey bat card with a bottle of mezcal. This small bat is one of the key pollinators of agave plants — the very plant mezcal is made from. Without it, there’s no mezcal. Thanks to conservation work, Mexico removed the maguey bat from its endangered species list in 2015. The card ended with: ¡Un brindis por eso! — a toast to that.

Art as a Bridge Between Cultures

Many of the guests had traveled from Europe. For them, animals like the axolotl, the cacomixtle, or the vaquita marina were completely unknown. I loved the idea that somewhere between the ceremony and the dancing, someone would pick up a card, open it, and learn something about this country they were visiting — about what makes it irreplaceable.

That’s what I always want my art to do. Not just decorate a space, but make someone feel something about the natural world.

On Creating Art for Special Occasions

This project reminded me that illustration doesn’t have to live on gallery walls to matter. Sometimes it lives on a table in Atlixco, tied to a mezcal bottle with a green ribbon, waiting for the right person to pick it up.

See all the photos on my Instagram ↓

www.instagram.com/danilopezros