Aloha, wahines! I’m back and I hate it. All I want to do is be back on Maui. Same with D. We can’t wait to get back for our wedding and are already trying to figure out if we can go again in October or November.
Good thing is we seriously got a ton done for the wedding. If you’ve thought about doing going for a planning trip and have been on the fence about it, do it! I can’t stress enough how awesome it was to get to talk to vendors face to face and mark off so many checks. The extra money of the trip was so worth the stress release!
I have lots of pictures to share and will go into greater details about everything when I post all about it on the blog. Until then, this will have to do:
Our first day there we were able to go to a bunch of different stores, get prices and figure out what we will be serving for the welcome dinner. Of course, it’ll be Hawaiian food. Pretty much everything will be coming from Costco. I was pretty excited to see items at Costco that I either can’t get here or have a really hard time getting. Our welcome dinner is going to be really easy to put together.
Also while at Costco, we were able to see some of their tropical flowers and leis that they offer. All of them were a great price and really beautiful. Getting our flowers through them will be great since they were so fresh, beautiful and a great price.
We went to the ABC store, Hilo Hattie and Longs to pick up some things for the wedding. Got the plumeria hair flowers for the fans, got some sea grassed weaved baskets to use to put the fans, tears of joy, programs, etc in, got little tiny weaved boxes to put gifts of jewelry in for our friends who have helped for the wedding, got hibiscus hair flowers to hook to the top of those boxes, got Hawaiian lotions and nail files to put in the purses for our MOD and our daughters, a little Hawaii album to put our guestbook postcards into, retro Hawaiian postcards and Hawaiian candies for the OOT bags, barkcloth fabric to use for our basement tiki bar and so much more. I was so glad to have all of this found and purchased.
Of course, the best part was getting to go to our venue, Mama’s Fish House. It’s unbelievably beautiful! We couldn’t have dreamed up a more perfect place for us to get married. It’s old Hawaii done right! They are great with the aloha hospitality and made us feel so special while we were there. We are so excited to share this place with our guests. Plus, their service is really attentive and they park all cars with free valet. All nice little pluses for the wedding.
We had our cake tasting while we were at Mama’s. O! M! G! Everything was sooooo good! We are so excited for our cake. We also tried drinks and a few different dishes. Everything was amazing. It’s going to be hard to pick an appetizer to serve to our guests.
We got to tour the grounds, see where we will be staying and talk to the event planner, as well. We got all kinds of stuff worked out with the planner, which was great. It was nice getting to talk to her face to face.
Also while in Paia, we checked out the town to have more information on it for our guests. While in Paia we mailed out our welcome dinner invitations. Then we headed over the beach we are inviting everyone to join us at during the day before the welcome dinner. Of course, we got in the water and swam. It was so wonderful!
Later that night we went to Hali’imaile General Store to try it out for our rehearsal dinner. It was super yummy. We will be having our rehearsal dinner there!
The next day we met with Reverend Pia Aluli who will be conducting our wedding ceremony. He was super nice and is a good fit for us. We got some details figured out and the rest I will be emailing him.
After we met with Pia, we checked out the shops in the area and found D’s wedding band. It’s beautiful and he loves it. We are both so happy to have found it. We looked for me too, but didn’t find anything that would work with my ring.
Last, but not least, we mailed out our save the dates for our Portland wedding celebration. Glad to have gotten so much done. Wish I didn’t have to come back!