Geoff's Wedding Bio

We took the idea and ended up designing our own template which matched our colors and theme.

We then just cut them out and put them invite some nice blue envelopes for mailing.  One of the over-riding themes of our wedding was 'simple and fun', and we thought this invite fit that bill...

There is an amazing cupcake shop in Hawaii call the Hokulani Bake Shop (http://hokulanibakeshop.com/10)

All the cupcakes were amazing.  We ended up getting the paradise coconut cupcakes, and add an orange orchid to the to of each one to dress them up a little. 

We knew we wanted a beach wedding, but having never been to hawaii before out wedding we weren't sure which one.  We knew we wanted something with a bit of a breeze, low chance of rain, fairly quiet (eg - not Waikiki), and close to our reception.  We found this great list of beach wedding locations in Hawaii: http://www.theromancespecialists.com/locations/index.php?region=17

We narrowed it down to Kailua Beach, Waimanolo Beach, and Waialae beach park, and decided to make the final call when we got there.  Ultimately we decided to get married on Waimanolo, because it best matched our criteria (particularly that it was only 20mins from the reception and much quieter than the other beaches)

Our ceremony was performed by Rev Mark: http://www.alohaforeverhawaiiweddings.com/ .  Both he and his wife were lovely people, and very easy to deal with.

As Sarah was walking down the aisle he was signing a traditional Hawaiian wedding song, which was really lovely.  He was also easily able to accommodate a few customisations we wanted to make to their ceremony.

As for decor, it was pretty simple.  We set up the table for the sand ceremony and for the signing.  We set up a few decorations, including flowers to mark an aisle, and some tiki torches.

We had mentioned to a couple people that we had thought of having people blow bubbles )instead of throwing rice) but decided not to do it.  Our wonderful friends actually went out and got little bubble packs for everyone and surprised us at the end :-) Thankfully the wind was blowing in the right direction....

After the ceremony we went straight into pictures, starting off with group and family shots.  This worked out pretty well, as we got some amazing pictures with everyone.  We then spent another hour or so with just the 2 us, while everyone else went back to the reception.   We only had our photographers just before the ceremony, at the ceremony, and for photos after the ceremony.  We did not have them at the reception.

Here are a few things we learned about having a wedding on the beach...

- Don't do it in the middle of the day.  Anytime between 10-2 is probably going to be too hot.  

- Make sure you have water for people.  

- Our ceremony was only 20min, so we didn't bother having chairs.

- Our ceremony was at 4pm. We wanted to make sure that we weren't taking pictures after sunset.  This was still probably too early (sunset was close to 7).  We were squinting in a lot of the pictures because it was still quite bright.

- We were married on a shady part of the beach. This really helped keep things cool, but also meant the lighting was really hard for pictures (background much brighter than us).  Fortunately our photographers were amazing.

- The beach (wind/waves) are actually quite loud, so you need to speak loudly.

- Keep the decorations simple, and let the natural beauty do most of the work.

We either bought or rented decorations and supplies (tables, chairs, dance floor, vases, etc).  Our friends and family did most of the decorating.  Our colors were orange and blue, but most of the decor at the reception was orange.  The view was so spectacular we kept the decorations pretty minimal.  We had some candles/flowers as basic centerpieces.  We bought the candles, runners (which were actually scarfs), and flowers, and rented the candle covers and tables.

We had some flowers from our ceremony on the beach.  Naturally we didn't leave those flowers on the beach.  To get more use out of them, we actually transformed them info centerpieces for the reception as well.  

We rented most our supplies from http://alohapartyrentals.com/  I would definitely recommend them

For dinner we went with Maria Masterson (oahuchef), who was just amazing in every way.  She was very responsive, and helped us come up with a menu that would fit our style.  We wanted a fresh and healthy menu (who wants heavy food when you're in the tropics?), and also wanted the menu to be mostly finger foods, so people wouldn't have to sit to eat.  We wanted people to be walking rather than sitting at tables all night.

Our menu looked like this:

Appetizers: 6:30 - 7:30

• pita w/ dips (hummus, eggplant, yoghurt dill, & cucumber)
• sun-dried tomato crostinis
• veggie platter (carrots, celery, cucumber, peppers, olives, zucchini, cheery tomatoes, broccoli spears)
• gourmet fruit & cheese platter
• crumbed brie w/ raspberry sauce & crackers

Mains:  7:30 - 8:30

• coconut shrimp
• assorted brown & white rice sushi platter (salmon, tuna, avocado, california)
• phyllo spinach & cheese pastries
• veggie summer rolls (rice paper rolls)
• chicken & pineapple skewers

We want to keep the night pretty low key, and as they're were only 30 people, an ipod with a pre-set playlist worked best for us...  We did rent a dance floor and a popcorn machine though :-)

For favors we just made a candy buffet and provided bags for people to take their own candy.  We thought this was a fun thing to do, and since it was a destination wedding, didn't actually require us or our guests to have to travel with anything extra.