Our day started with me getting woken up super early in the morning (pre dawn) to massive rain storms. It lasted a bit throughout the morning here in Haleiwa until about 8 or so when it cleared up- I was very glad that we wouldn’t have to move our wedding indoors!
We packed up all our wedding day items, along with things we needed for our dinner at the resort and loaded our car up and headed to Ted’s – a local bakery down the road. We got some giant pastries and coffee and came back to our bungalow to relax a bit. We watched the ocean (and whales and dolphins!) and took a walk along our secluded beach. I handled some phone calls from our planner and made sure all was in order for the day.
Around 10 or so we headed out for the day and headed into town. We found a great little kids store called Growing Keiki’s and spent WAY too much on things for the kids, but we miss them! We walked to a couple surf shops, bought Piper her much requested big dried starfish and then decided to head up to Turtle Bay.
We checked into our dayroom around 11:45, and I started my hair around 12:15 or so after getting everything all organized. It took me about till 1:30 to get it done (with a couple hiccups along the way). Normally it would’ve gone much sooner but nerves definitely didn’t help me here (the pressure to get it right!). I had two small French braids on with side going back to a messy curly bun with some orchids in my hair. Very simple and out of my face for a windy beach wedding. Matt went and got food from the bar downstairs (and a drink I later find out!) while I started my makeup. He came back when I was about halfway done with it and I tried to eat the lunch he brought me but I was too focused and nervous to eat much then. I got done with my makeup around 2:15 and then we headed down to the florist at 2:30. I picked out my bouquet wrap color and my ceremony lei color and we were done!
Our photographer (Elizabeth Morgan) showed up right at 3:00 and told us to basically ignore her while she did detail shots (dress, shoes, flowers, ring) – she talked to us the whole time though so we got to know her. It was nice- Matt and I just sat and watched tv while she did her thing and she commented how we relaxed we were:)
After getting all her detail shots we did some getting ready shots- Matt getting me into my dress, putting shoes and jewelry on, and some fun ones of us on our balcony. Elizabeth seemed pretty happy to be working with us- all my years of watching Top Model certainly helped me out when I knew what she was asking for in certain shots. I’m excited to see them!
We went down to the lobby at 3:50 and met our planner Joann and off we went to the ceremony in a golf cart! Our pastor was waiting for us there and we all talked a bit about how the whole thing was going to work.
Our ceremony started with a Hawaiian prayer and then him talking at us a bit about marriage. We chose to partake in the Hawaiian lei ceremony, which is an exchange of leis and Hawaiian words to symbolize your unity. Then came our vows, then our rings, then more talking, then we were married!
We signed our certificate and then Joann (who took all the pics here since we won’t have our photographers back for awhile) and our Pastor left. For the next hour and a half we did photos with Elizabeth- I can’t wait to get them back! We took photos in the woods, at the stables with the horses, at the barn area and up on the farmhouse porch, as well as in the water. Great location (nothing was more than 50 feet away or so from our ceremony location) for our wedding and photos!
At 5:30, with Matt and I completely covered in sand, the bottom 12 inches of my dress soaking wet and twigs all over me, we got picked up again by Joann. We thanked Elizabeth and dropped her off at the car, then thanked Joann and off we went to change! Traipsing through the lobby was pretty funny- we definitely looked like a mess! We got back to our room, changed clothes and packed up and checked out of our room. We put everything back in our car then headed back to the resort for our wedding dinner. It was so great! Comped bottle of wine and a coursed dinner- prefect way to end the night. Afterwards we did some shopping in the gift shop then came back and sat on our patio for awhile watching the ocean.
We couldn’t have asked for a better wedding day!!
Beautiful dress and wonderful simple ceremony. Congratulations!
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