It’s turkey week. And I suck at doing any extraneous writing/blogging/socializing that’s not putting together a papes or being eyebrows deep in rewriting website copy.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t still love y’all.
So, in the spirit of all that is meant to be family/friends/love/cheesetasticness, take a little lurves. Hang on to it for when you feel like I’m neglecting you.
Oh, the Mauna Lani. How addictive you’ve become. Hooked, after just one trip. And now that the cold weather and snow have officially inundated the Hole, it’s time for a little visual trip back.
While the prices were a bit in the upper echelon, I couldn’t be happier about choosing to have our wedding there. Lauren was the first person to respond after I shot out a flurry of emails to hotels on the Big Island. Seriously, I think I emailed 15 places the moment we decided that Hawaii was the place to be.
Lauren emailed me back, got a general idea of what we wanted and immediately began working with me to ensure the best experience. Rather than pay a holy buttload up front, she allowed us to make a feasible deposit and pay down the rest over time. Which worked like a dream.
When the time came, she and Pinkie did everything to make sure we were within our means and had the best effing party at the same time.
And it wasn’t just them. EVERYONE at the Mauna Lani was amazing. From the service when we first arrived, to the helpfulness of everyone ranging from spa coordinators to front desk to bartenders to pool attendants. There was such sincere friendliness and genuine caring.
When they say the staff at the Mauna Lani becomes your ohana, they truly mean it.
Glass elevator. Open-air.
Oh, a few fish ponds? Sure. Why not.
View from the top.
Not bad for a little beach ceremony action.
Nice place to be a fish.
Beachy keen.
I like turtles.
How's the serenity?
Venue: Mauna Lani Bay Hotel & Bungalows
Photos: Persimmon Images
As opposed to my 3.5- to 4-hour process, Aussie’s apparently only took about 15 minutes. Sh*t, shower and shave, I’m sure. Therefore his time was spent, more aptly, hanging out by the pool, drinking beer, etc. Lucky bastard.
Vows.
The predecessor.
Smiley Rusty.
Good thing there's a doctor in the crew.
Gresh.
Brace yo self.
Cool.
Proud Mama.
See how easy and painless it was for them? Well, painless except for Gresham’s leg, that is. And don’t they look so handsome?
Aussie’s Shirt: Express for Men
His Shorts: Volcom on Dogfunk.com
Pocketwatches: Amazon.com
All photographs by Persimmon Images.
Who knows what's lurking ...
So, the good news with the new apartment is that we have a spare room.
The bad news? We have a spare room. That seems to be a catch-all for … all.
We legitimately are/were working obscene hours and couldn’t be fussed with facing the abyss. But now that it’s cold-weather season and all my cardigans, socks, boots, snowboard gear, etc. are buried within, I have to start seriously considering the possibility of facing the monstrosity.
Also, we have friends visiting this winter. And a spare room really should also be a guest room, right?
Sigh. Good thing I’ll have pleeeenty of time this winter since I was only able to get a 10-day ski pass.
Once we got back to the hotel and stood awkwardly around for a bit, then ran around doing some last-minute errands, it was time to shower and begin the process of getting ready. Of course, being me, I allowed entirely too much time between returning from the Love Pond and my appointment with Mara. So I sat around for a while. I wrote a blog post, checked my FaceSpace, drank a warm beer and just kind of chilled. Kat showed up and started taking pics of the extraneous little things, and eventually Mara showed up to get the surprisingly long process of making me all purdyfied out of the way. Remember how I wanted my hair originally? Yeah, well, my hair doesn’t do that. But I dug the end result.
*P.S.: There’s some bra action, though minor, in this post. Divert your eyes/computer screen, if you must.*
Pretty sure I'm telling Shane to keep the beverages flowing.
Beginning of the braid dilemma.
Solution to the braid dilemma.
Mimosas ease frustration. It's a fact.
Another awesome thing about best friends? They actually force you to eat. Burgers.
The finger waves that never would.
My hair is, apparently, as stubborn as its bearer.
Let Round 2 commence!
Moar?
Airbrushing: Good for nixing forehead spots and tan lines.
Mara totally had the set up. Even if there was an obscene amount of pink.
I begged for this. And ran out of time to put it on.
More failure!!!
Damn you, follicles!
Shane likes to carry big black garbage bags around. Whatevs.
Mama Sooz.
Loves.
My favorites.
It takes a team.
Shaner trained for months for this.
Smells like team spirit.
Mama's job.
The whole process took about 3.5 to 4 hours, which was considerably longer than I’d thought. My hair refused to cooperate, which dragged the whole experience out. Mara was such a trooper, and finally after about the third try on the finger waves, she asked if she could just sweep my bangs to the side. At that point, I was totally for whatever she was suggesting. She did such a fantastic job and fully put up with all of our goofiness.
Hair and makeup: Mara at Lilikoi Hair Studio.
Venue: Mauna Lani Bay Hotel & Bungalows
All photos by Persimmon Images.
Hey!!! Guess what???
We’re on Offbeat Bride today!!!
I started reading Offbeat Bride pretty early in the engagement process and it quickly became one of my top-three go-to blogs. As in, my morning isn’t complete if I haven’t read it whilst drinking my coffee.
Throughout the engagement and planning process, much like the question we hear now, nearly everyone around us would ask us the same thing, or a variant of such:
How are you doing?
How are you feeling?
Are you nervous/anxious/ready?
We understood it was all well-intentioned.
During the earlier stages, the question was one that would invite a lengthy response which usually corresponded with more intricate details about plans, ideas, giddiness, etc.
However in the immediate days prior, it became like that damn mosquito that hovers near your ear when you’re trying to sleep, just to flit out of reach as you go to conquer it.
It felt as though every time someone asked us, we melted a little more, and not in a good way.
This all came to a head the night before, during a joint family barbeque put on by mi familia. We were tired, frazzled, anxious, overwhelmed, underwhelmed … we were, indeed, ALL THE THINGS.
We appreciated, and still do, everything everyone did for us. But at that point, we’d traveled for three days, had reunions galore from halfway around the world, partied for our hens and stags, missed one marriage license appointment, had another that very morning, finalized all the details, had some miscommunication meltdowns with the coordinator, done a run-through, were under pressure to see everyone we hadn’t, got lost on the way to the barbeque and here we were. With many asking us how we were feeling.
Cue: Meltdown.
It, unfortunately, was one of my sweet, poor, unsuspecting aunts who triggered it. Luckily, she’s got a good head on her shoulders and took it quite well when I turned to her and said:
“Quite honestly, if one more person asks me that question, I’m going to lose it.”
I then stepped away, with Aussie, and cried. Not for being sad, not for being scared. Just for being so overwrought with emotion and stress and pressure. We tried to return to the party, but we couldn’t even finish a beer. A sure sign we were finito.
Luckily, our amazing photographers who’d been there, done that, and my super awesome pseudo-mama, Sooz, took notice. The three came over and told us, under no uncertain terms, that it was quite all right for us to bow out and go back to the hotel.
So we did.
We flopped on our bed, curled up together and just stared. After a while we put on an episode of whatever show we were watching at the time. And we passed out.
We really did appreciate all the concern and checking in, but weddings are hard. I’m happy we didn’t go ‘zilla, but it wasn’t a graceful moment.
Planning weddings is stressful. Being around a ton of family and friends, especially when you haven’t seen them in a while, can be stressful. Add all the elements together? It’s a recipe for implosion.
We survived, obviously, and being with our friends the next morning helped to ease the tension.
We learned, through this experience, that even though we knew the wedding wasn’t about just us, nor was it just about our families, etc., it was about weathering the storm together. It was likely (maybe with the exception of a moment or two during the hens/stags) our most graceless moment, and one I’m not happy about.
But, it did set up boundaries, boundaries we badly needed. We needed to step away and just have some us time, time we hadn’t been able to have up until that point. It’s unfortunate it took that moment, those actions, for us to realize it, but that set up a template for us to be able to recognize it in the future. Which makes knowing what we need, what our boundaries are, not so tough right now.
Random Acts of Wedding 