A totally awesome JUST for Hawai'i Girls Knot Giveaway

kaesha · January 2011

As you may, or may not know, the Hawaii is known to have some of the most creative, interesting knotties. DIY projects? We take 'em on and kill them. Vibrant tropical colours or formal elegance? We can do it all. Totally amazing board vibe? The aloha spirit reigns here!

So, in honour of our awesomeness, we're having a super sweet giveaway thanks to Knot Annie!

We're drawing for one lucky HI knottie to win one (1) copy of the Knot's newest (and best book) The Ultimate Wedding Lookbook:

All you have to do to win is respond to the following question before Friday, January 14th, 2011:

What creative ideas are you using to make your wedding a unique one? (Think DIY projects, local cuisine, wedding week events, AHR parties, flowers, vows, etc)

Good luck!

Tanq&Tonic · January 2011

OMG I want this, especially since everything looks yellow on the cover. And our wedding color is yellow!

We wanted personal, handmade-but-formal invitations, so we actually built our own letterpress machine. It took hours & hours & hours, but we finally got everything working. FI came up with the design himself, and we sent the stamp off to be made. From that point on, we inked, pressed, cut, and painted the edges of every page of our invitations. Everything was assembled into a card fold, and hand calligraphied by me. While it was a lot of work, the final product reflects our style and the tone of the wedding. A number of knotties have asked us for details, so we're in the process of writing blog posts & making videos so other brides can have DIY letterpress.

fabutan · January 2011

This is awesome!! I love Tanq's idea of a DIY letterpress...I'd be so interested in learning more about that.

We're just starting with a couple DIY projects four months out of our wedding date. Our main DIY "challenge" so far has been putting together our own escort cards for guests. I've made some paper flowers to attach to each card and going to hand calligraphy each guest's name. I searched for a few vintage white photo frames with 'clip-on' places for attaching photos and we're going to display 8-10 cards on each frame (according to table). Kind of difficult to describe, but I'll post a photo once they're all complete.

Another DIY project we're thinking of doing is handstamped vintage handkerchiefs and DIY napkin rings. Just starting to look into all of this!

In terms of other personal touches, we're trying to infuse more cultural elements into our event. Since FI is Japanese, we're having a bilingual ceremony and a tea ceremony to honor our parents. We *might* include chopstick favors too (depending on cost). Going to include Hawaiian elements, such as blowing of a conch shell to kick of the ceremony and local fish dishes on the menu (we love seafood!). This is still a work in progress, so we'll see how it all comes together over the next few months!!

wranglerrobin · January 2011

We are still in the early stages of planning but we are thinking of giving away a love bird ornament to each guest since our wedding is close to christmas

We are also thinking about draping untied leis as a canopy above the tables

cissybritt · January 2011

Where do i go to enter to win????

kimmykupcakes · January 2011

Our whole wedding is DIY! Well, pretty much. I;m even my own wedding planner.

My mom and I will be making my DRESS and birdcage veil.

One of my girlfriends and I will be designing and making the flower clip I will be wearing in the back of my hair.

We will be having a mimosa bar with breakfast pastries following our morning wedding for our guests to enjoy while we have our pictures taken. FI and I will be making, putting everything together and decorating the mimosa and pastries bar. We are even working on some cute little hand painted signs that will tell guests what each drink and food item is.

The favor we will be giving to our guests at our lunch reception FI and I are also making. We are decorating Lauhala boxes and filling them with seahorse shaped chocolates that we will be making.

Another girlfriend and I will be making our save the date and invitations for both the wedding and AHR. We are designing them to look like vintage travel brochures and itineraries. I recently purchased a vintage Hawaii travel lot off of Etsy that we are using for inspiration. Each guest that comes to the wedding will even have a hand typed itinerary addressed to them just like what use to be done when people traveled. We will also be making the programs to go alone with this theme.

The destination bags that we will be giving to our guests FI and I will be putting together. We will be making labels with our wedding logo for them and putting personal touches on each item in the bags.

FI is going to make a cupcake stand that we will be able to break down and take with us to Maui to use at the wedding. Then we will use the same one at our AHR.

My daughter and I will be making the cake topper for the small cake that will be the top tier of the cupcake stand.

For our AHR favors we are designing Mai Tai glasses with our wedding logo, wedding date and a tapa cloth design on them. A friend of ours is making the glasses.

I'm also going to be making straws with little says on them, paper drink umbrella with the wedding date on them and a card box. All of these will be used at both the wedding and AHR.

My mom will be making my bouquet and together we will be creating pineapple centerpieces for both the wedding and AHR.

At both our Maui wedding and AHR we are putting together our own "photo booth" that will have a photographer instead of an actual booth. We are creating Hawaii inspired props for our guests to use in the photos. We will send a copy of the best photo that each of our guest takes in the Thank You cards we send them. We are also making the photo props that are painted bodies that you put your face in for the backyard for guests of a hula dancer and a ukulele player.

At our AHR we will be doing all of our decorating and making most of the food. The food we won't be making is the dessert bar with tasty treats from all our favorite places in Portland. We will also be hand painting wood signs for the desert bar to let everything one know what everything is.

FI will be creating a special signature tiki drink to serve at our wedding and AHR using our favorite tropical flavors.

FI and I with help from another friend are putting together a video of the wedding and photos of our relationship and the honeymoon that will be on loop during our AHR.

Some friends of ours have an exotica band that will be performing at the AHR and I may be signing a few songs with them during the big event. They've asked me to do it, but we are still working out all of the details.

Last, but certainly not least, we are designing and building a tiki bar in our basement and completely designing and doing all of the work for our whole backyard to be a little bit of Hawaii to have our AHR at. There are so many things FI and I are both making for the backyard, as well as the tiki bar to bring this all togther. We have even spent the past two weekends working on the basement.

Like I said, it's a all very DIY!!! It's so exciting to see it all come together and we can not wait for it to all be done. Oh, I just got excited about the wedding again and working on everything. THANKS! You all know I haven't been feeling my wedding groove this whole time and am so happy to now have it back! To me, that's winning!

kimmykupcakes · January 2011

I almost forgot, we are also putting together a "Map of the Stars" for our AHR that will be a map of Portland marked with all the places that mean something to us, such as where we had our first kiss and our favorite places. to go for out out of town guests to have something fun to do and to give them information on some great places to check out while in Portland.

We will be having a foodcart welcome dinner at our favorite pod of foodcarts i Portland as well for our AHR since many guests will be traveling from out of town for it. We love foodcarts and they are so Portland. We can't think of a better place to share something we love with our AHR guests.

melmac26 · January 2011

For us, having it in Hawaii was unique in both our families. It's a special year, both parents are celebrating 35th wedding anniversaries & many have never been. So to make it special my fiance & I are going to give a special toast to our parents at the reception. We're also considering a way for them to renew their vows while we're there (probably after the wedding).
Along the lines of the other ladies, we're making our own rectangular fan programs with ribbon attachments & we're designing the layout & graphics for it. We're also using shells to attach the place cards to. We felt that since we're in Hawaii we'll add the elements of the ocean to our wedding. We've also decided on a blue & white wedding mini-cake w/ cupcake tower. We're trying to make it unique & match our wedding colors of aqua blue, coral red & white. The last thing we've already done is taken our professional engagement photos & turned it into our guest book. It looks amazing. We'll be having our families & wedding party sign it first so they can put something meaningful in & it will be an example for the rest of the guests. I think that will be the best present aside from our wedding pictures.

jackcody · January 2011

Unique things--almost all of these are in my bio:

PAPER

I made my own monogram image, which went on almost everything from bar menus to seating plan to having a custom stamp made so that I could make TY notes, too.
I made the invites (with monogram, of course)
I made "travel brochures" and sent them to guests about a month before.
I made "girl day" invites for a girls' lunch that were really cute.
We made amazing welcome bags and included a folder with a welcome letter, contact numbers, day-of schedule, week-of schedule and random activity brochures we had picked up around the island.
Guest book was an Apple Photo Book of our travels up to the night we got engaged--the travel side of our personalities was also evident in our table names (countries we visited together).

FOOD

We have a major sweet tooth--each event had two desserts. At the rehearsal dinner we had a "decorate your cookie" bar (sugar cookies, lots of different frostings, and different toppings). It was a huge hit. We also had ColdStone cupcakes that evening too. At the wedding we had creme brulee and then a later serving of the cake.
Along with the later serving of the cake, we had "after-dinner" shots: Duck Farts or Tequila. They were served in guest's favors, custom ordered shot glasses.

OTHER

At the After-Party, we had a video of our travels that I made playing on a loop. It entertained those that we're too wiped out to dance.
I had a ring pouch and custom hankies for my parents made by an etsy artist.
I rented real diamond earrings for myself and bridesmaids from www.adorn.com
We wrote our own ceremony and personalized vows, and a friend officiated the ceremony.

pepelau · January 2011

I really wish I could share more elaborate & creative ideas like the other fabulous brides on this board. But I'm afraid that it just doesn't compare. Anyways, since I really want to enter this contest, here's we go...

- We got married on 10/10/10 at 10:10am. The 10:10 am thing was unplanned and just happened. Originally I wanted an evening venue but since it was a popular date, we had to book a lunch venue due to availability. Our ceremony was scheduled at 10am and of course I was running late so it just happened that our ceremony started at 10:10am!

- Our wedding was featured on Hawaii News Now which sort of made it unique (although I didn't plan this neither, it just happened!). The morning of our wedding, the PR person at our hotel called our room and asked us for permission to film our wedding for a news story (about 10/10 weddings). At the time, we had no idea what they were talking about and we thought that it was going to be in some tourist magazine or something, but we ended up on the local news that night.

- Instead of buying gifts for each other we decided to skip spending extra money and just wrote cards to each other. We put our cards, our invitation, a favor, a flower from my bouquet, pictures and some other sentimental items into a shadow box to open on our 10th anniversary, sort of a little wedding time capsule to look forward to!

- We did a funny love story video that is sort of the opposite of a love story. Basically both of us claim that the other person was the one to make the first move in the relationship. It was a hit at the wedding.

- Our grand entrance song was the Monday Night football theme song, I threw a nerf football to hubby and he ran onto the dancefloor and did a victory touchdown pose. This was appropriate for us as we both love football and our wedding was on a football Sunday!

- We skipped some of the traditions like the bouquet/garter toss. Mainly because most of guests are already married and I myself use to hate being singled out for being single and having to go on stage in front of everyone for this. Instead, we played the newlywed game where each of us had to guess the other person's answer. The loser had to do a little strip tease afterwards, this made for some good laughs, cheap entertainment and funny pictures. Also, when people dinged their glasses for us to kiss, we pulled names of couples out of a bag and they had show us how to kiss.
- hubby designed my engagemenet ring himself and my wedding ring was passed on to me from my mom. I love that they both have sentimental value and no one else has rings exactly like mine!
Other projects pics below - save the date luggage tag, favor bag, candy buffet, reception table decor and gazebo

save the date luggage tag (DIY: tag was a modified business card from vistaprint, ordered the plastic tag holder and strap from some office supply store. will try to put up a better picture of a complete one later.)

The favor bag (DIY: plain white bag purchased from Michael's, then glued on the ribbon & bow and designed my own tag)

candy buffet - (DIY: candy labels & ribbons, misc decoration: "sweet" letters from Paper Source, printed my own sign, purchased table cloth & crystal garland from Jo-Ann's)

candy buffet close up

reception table decor - ("i do" letters bought from another Hawaii knottie (thanks Cai & Jaymers!), kissing chihuahuas are salt and pepper shakers from amazon.)

aliciacharlie · January 2011

I love DIY projects! The fiance and I did our own save the date postcards with scratch off (lottery style) birds and heart dates. We're doing sugar and spice homemade wedding favors.... I'm making sugar candy that looks like sea glass and the fiance is making his signature bbq spice rub. We're also making mason jar lanterns and centerpieces. I've already made all my cranes, so I'll probably use them for decorations. My mom is also looking into making my veil!

It was really important to us that everything about our wedding had its fingerprints in Hawaii, so we opted for a caterer who specializes in sustainable local food. Also, instead of a traditional wedding cake, we'll be having a shave ice bar to be open throughout the night so our guests can cool off from dancing the night away! Our venue is the Sunset Ranch, one of the first private land conservation easements. While I no longer live in Hawaii, I love that I can contribute to local suppliers and establishments! Since our wedding is the weekend after Labor Day, we'll be going up for the entire week with friends and family. The Saturday before our wedding, we'll be going to the Okinawan Festival and Kapiolani Bon Dance so all our friends and family can meet and enjoy a unique-to-Hawaii cultural event.

vipheathr · January 2011

Getting married on 3/4/12 in Maui where we live!
Did the Save the Dates ourselves and they turned out great. Planning on having our guests arrive to a Maui Gold pineapple with a DIY card and other adornement at the hotels as a welcome gift. Also will be doing a DIY activity map for our wedding week since we are doing a Road to Hana caravan type trip and a whale watch with the guests. Doing all the centerpeices ourselves. Can't wait!

syoun · January 2011

I designed our save the dates and am planning to follow many destination knotties in designing hawaiian themed boarding pass invites.

AKWinterBride · January 2011

Sadly, I am not creative nor crafty. However, I did hook up with my favorite super star vendor of all times, my now good friend Michelle (Sweet Peas and Seashells on Etsy). She has done all of our paperwork and a lot of the design elements for us. So - I guess I don't need to win the book!

cryssv · January 2011

As said above, for us just the intimate marriage in Hawaii is what makes our wedding unique to our family. Most of our AHR is DIY and will bring back the Hawaiian feel for all of our guests who weren't able to attend the actual ceremony in Maui. Centerpieces- I've built and designed all of them to look somewhat like a beach inside each bubble bowl with sand, starfish, shells, "water", pearls, rocks and then topped with two vibrant pink orchids and a candle Invitations- following a template and then designing it to be my own I have created boarding pass invitations for our ceremony, next i'llbe starting the AHR ones Photobook/ guestbook created with all of our engagement photos and baby pictures Favours- will be making the chocolates for the boxes And put together 2 separate webpages for the guests; 1 for ceremony and 1 for reception Pretty sure I'm missing something, I'll probably be back!!

sld0618 · January 2011

We're doing the DW to Maui and having it small and initimate. Then we're bringing back the Hawaiian aspect to our AHR. So here's just a list of things that are making our wedding special to us.

Ceremony: I'm getting married on Makena beach which is my little sister's name. I chose it specifically for this reason!! FI has a friend from college who is from Hawaii. He is going to teach you how to say I love you in Hawaiian so that at the end of our vows, we can say it to each other.

Invites: This is completely DIY. We got a beach picture off of etsy with our names and date written in the sand. We're putting all of our info on top of it and then printing it off at Costco where it's about 30 bucks for 200 to be printed off. We will have two different invites for Maui and for the AHR. It includes a Hawaiian saying on it too

There are two different wedding websites as well. The Maui one will have Maui info as well as the AHR so guest aren't confused with having to go on two different websites. Then we will have lined envelopes with wrap around labels!

AHR: We're doing a Hawaiian inspired meal with a pineapple sauce over the chicken as well as flavors for our cake. My mom is making my cake, she is absolutely amazing and there wasn't a single piece left over at my aunt's wedding. The venue said that was the first time that had ever happened to them! She is doing the decor completely Hawaiian/beach. We'll also be showing a slide show of our wedding pictures and the video of our ceremony as well.

Centerpieces: Completely DIY. Taking 3 flameless flicker candles and putting them in the middle of the mirror tile that is sanitized. We bought seashell, starfish, conch shell, etc, chocolate molds and will be doing white chocolate with blue (wedding color) swirled in them. The chocolates will go around the candles. Doubles as a favor.

Guest book: Either doing a custom surfboard from etsy or a Maui travel book. I love the surfboard idea, but we haven't decided which one we would want for the guest book. We will still get the surfboard made though with our names, date, and the Hawaiian saying from our invites.

Favors: Foam plumeria, silk leis, and koozies. Trying to bring in the Hawaiian aspect with that too.

Dress hanger: Will have some type of short Hawaiian love saying. Possibly I Hookahi Kahi Ke Aloha - Be one in love

Luggage Tags: DIY completely from pieces of wood and paint.

My dress: I'm cutting into a cocktail dress afterwards and will be wearing it on our 1 year ann.

The OOT Bags: Almost everything is DIY, but what I'm excited about is keepsake bottles for sand from their favorite beach!

mauilove2011 · January 2011

I've been so amazed with the creativity on this board, I don't think I can compete! But will enter because the book looks awesome.....!

-We are hosting quite a few wedding week events, starting with a hen/stag night in Waikiki. We are then island-hopping with our guests over to Maui for a Welcome Drinks, Luau, and then a Farewell BBQ following the wedding. We are really excited that the majority of our guests are going to see at least two of the Hawaiian islands. FI and I are then heading to Kauai for our mini-moon - can't wait!

-The most special part of our wedding I feel is that we have so many guests traveling from so far to be there. As he is British and I'm Australian, we have a large proportion of those nationalities traveling to get there, plus guests have been invited from Dubai, Canada, China, Germany, Taiwan, the USA, and so on. With more than 70 people RSVPing yes so far, we feel very blessed.

-As we love Maui so much, we really wanted to show it off to our guests and incorporate in our wedding, so (apart from the fact that all our vendors are obviously local) we are making every effort to chose Hawaiian cuisine, flowers and music for our wedding. For example, our food includes Mahi-Mahi fish, coconut shrimp, crabcakes, kona coffee creme brulee and lilikoi cheesecake. Like a lot of brides in Hawaii, we are also having a local officiant who will kick-start the ceremony by blowing a conch shell, and we are using hawaiian soaps as our guest favours, along with other local items in our OOT guest welcome bags.

-To really personalise our wedding however, we have been undertaking what feels like heaps of DIY projects including making our STDs using vintage Hawaiian postcards, building a wedding website, making cocktail 'flags' and making our escort tags, menus, OOT bag welcome letters, and thank you cards (although some of these are all still on the to-do list!). We have also sourced as much stuff as possible from sole traders making items from home through etsy.

honeoyelake · January 2011

We are one month away from our Big Island wedding which will be at 9:00 in the morning, followed by a wedding breakfast at the Four Seasons near Kona. Almost everything is done as it is a quiet, small, intimate family wedding. We have a husband-wife minister couple who have made it very easy for us. We are "shipping" a box via UPS as I am not sure that the wedding candles being used as favors at the breakfast will make it through xray at the airport. We will also include a lovely pair of champagne flutes that were a Christmas gift, along with all the paper supplies to hold a pre-wedding picnic for family and friends on Valentine's Day. (Our wedding is on the 16th).Yes, the butterflies are starting every once in a while but are we ever looking forward to our big day!

rachelchristie6 · January 2011

My fiancée and I are totally into food & wine. I love the local culinary influence at the places we visit. That being said, our menu is focusing on regional culinary specialties and locally sourced ingredients.

We're also using seasonal, locally available flowers to continue this theme throughout the wedding. I'm still searching for the perfect favor that adds to the local theme!

A totally awesome JUST for Hawai'i Girls Knot Giveaway

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A totally awesome *JUST for Hawai'i Girls* Knot Giveaway

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A totally awesome JUST for Hawai'i Girls Knot Giveaway

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