Wishful Thinking:

As a woman planning your wedding you really think you have it all figured out. Colors, place, styles, people, what you would and would never do. Reality check…you don’t know anything! As a girl I always thought I would have a BIG wedding on the beach with my toes in the sand and a big tented backyard reception with 100 + people with a never ending supply of good times. And while all that still sounds wonderful (minus the 100+ people) it’s the exact opposite of what has come to be my reality.

As Colt and I started discussing ideas, themes, colors and places it was clear that he was going to be a very involved and vocal groom. There was no “whatever you want babe” but more like “really you like that”, “no what about this”, “well I really like that”. I think most brides would be scared and surprised at how very involved he is. He has a never ending flow of ideas which really is fun and a little stressful and took some getting used to. Our first decisions and direction was that we were going to have a sea foam green and tan wedding with starfish and invitations in a bottle. The colors were perfect, our invitations were adorable, the girls dresses were to die for and the guys were looking sharp. I also really loved the incorporation of the starfish to tie in the whole beach theme. It was perfect until… groomzilla showed up (hahahaha I am so kidding babe) but he did. Colt wasn’t sure that he loved “tan.” It wasn’t his color and he started looking at other ideas. I really didn’t love that but I wanted my man to feel good so I thought why not take him to the wedding store and have him try on the tan and really “sell” him on it! I had no doubt he was going to look amazing. We went by two wedding stores and out of respect I won’t mention the names of these stores but they were horrible and I feel really bad for brides that get married in Maui and can’t travel off island to get their stuff. Since there wasn’t any other wedding stores we drove home annoyed and bummed out.

rawrrr.

Grey in, Tan out.

A few days later we decided to go up to Macy’s to look around and see if they had some suits Colt could possibly try on. We were finally over the previous bad experience and thought it was time to try again. Surprisingly enough they actually had really good options. I found a really nice Kenneth Cole tan suit and was so excited for him to try it on. What I wasn’t excited about was that they made the same suit in grey and that’s the one he was very excited to try on. Long story short we didn’t walk out with the tan suit. Grey was in and my sea foam tan wedding was drifting out to sea.

New colors.

Once I got use to the idea of the new colors I really started to love them. It was the best fit to fit our new location. The beach got replaced by the chapel and the grand quickly became our playground for the reception. The new colors grey and yellow fit the style and became the theme. The more I looked the more I loved. It was edgy but modern, warm but very summer time.

out with the old and in with the new

New Wedding.

Since the colors, location and styles changed it was only natural that the people would too. My original dream of a large wedding was quickly replaced with the longing desire of a very small one. I made a promise to myself on the day we got engaged that nothing would become bigger than us. Fun and love are the fundamentals of everything our relationship is built on and I am determined to keep it that way no matter how stressed we get, how much money we don’t have, how stupid other people act or anything else that is bound to come up! This is our wedding and at the end of the day it’s about us. so..Learn it. Live it. Love it.

Once you’re engaged your whole world becomes this amazing never ending list of things to do. On any giving day at any giving time there is something to do, someone to call, money to be saved, an asshole to stress you out, something you missed, a detail that turns out a thousand times better than expected and the list goes on and on. Since we already knew that there were a lot of things we couldn’t do right away I tackled the list from the fun factor and what could be more fun than a photo shoot?!?!

Booking a photographer (reality check):

Since I am in the industry and know more than enough people I thought how hard could it really be to have someone throw me a bone and do some quality photos for cheap? I picked up the phone and started my calls from top favorites to medium. All seemed eager and excited to shoot but all wanted $600 to $2000 dollars. Hello, excuse me remember me? yes me, you know me?!?! Hahaha, come to find out most of my photographer “friends” are booked months in advance or are starving artist, and I am a bride on a budget. So since it seemed that wasn’t going to work, I started to look up some old contacts on Oahu through my model mayhem portfolio (we were going to be in Oahu in a few weeks and could surely make time for a photo shoot). While on model mayhem I was going through my contacts and remembered a local photographer that had reached out to me a few months prior to do a shoot. Looking through his portfolio I quickly realized that he was not only very talented but a very talented wedding photographer. I quickly sent him an e-mailed and kept my fingers crossed for the response I wanted.

Meet Warrick Price at Warrick Price Photography:

Warrick was more than we could have ever asked for. He was professional and fun and had a ton of ideas. He wasn’t looking for money and worked with us for TFP (trade for photo) meaning he would give us the rights to the photos but he was also allowed to use them for his portfolio & websites. We set up the shoot at Big Beach (the place of our beautiful engagement) for that Sunday; we were so excited everything was coming together perfectly!

We did our shoot on Sunday November 27^th (8 days after our engagement) and the love was radiating out of every ounce of us. Falling in love again and again is probably one of the most beautiful things this crazy world has to offer. Warrick was amazing and had us out there for over 4 hours. He took over 1,000 shots and we laughed the whole time. By the end of the shoot we hired him as our full time photographer for our wedding day. We were so impressed with how genuine, hard working, and honest he was. His attention to detail was immaculate and we both left feeling like we were on top of the world ~

Friday, November 18, 2011 (the back story (lie) to get me to the beach)

Text sent from Colt to Jenn:

Forecast for 2011 Maui News, Astronomers are predicting that the Leonids (metors) could experience an outburst of about 500 per hour on November 19th and 20th. Although Asia and Hawaii are favored for viewing of the outburst, observations are encouraged around the world on the night of November 19th, as better than normal rates could be seen. The moon will not be an issue. The Leonid meteor shower has produced some of the most spectacular meteor displays in history.
Jenn to Colt: whoa, looks like we are going to the beach tomorrow night!
Colt to Jenn: that’s what I was thinking how cool would that be?!
Jenn to Colt: Amazing!!!
Colt to Jenn: Dangarang!!!

Saturday, November 19, 2011.

It was a Saturday morning in beautiful Maui. It was even more beautiful than normal because for the first time in what seemed like forever we both had the day off. We had plans to go watch the meteor shower that evening and Colt was going to pick up his new dream motorcycle a 1972 CB750 Cafe Racer. Life was good and little did I know it was about to get even better.
Once Colt got done picking up his motorcycle we went and had lunch at Cheeseburger in Paradise. The afternoon was lazy and we enjoyed doing nothing with each other. As sunset began to approach we rolled out of bed packed a bottle of wine, two glasses, a blanket and headed down to big beach to watch the sunset and meteor show.

Once we arrived to big beach we hiked up and over the cliff to find our place in between big beach and little beach and watch the sunset over Lana’i. As we took pictures (our last pictures as boyfriend and girlfriend) laughed and drank our wine Colt continued to check the time. He wanted to ensure we were on the beach before dark. Once the sun was almost set we hiked back and stopped to take a picture on the cliff over looking the beach. We turned our backs to the beach and snapped our last photo. As I put my phone away I turned around to get one last look and…

BAM!

WILL YOU MARRY ME?

Each letter was illuminated in 6 foot rope lighting in the sand for the entire world to see with my man on his knee.

YES YES YES! Of course I said YES!

What happened next was a mix of pure adrenaline, emotion and just plain losing our minds. The best and only way to describe it would be how you feel when you are dreaming and you can’t tell if you are in a dream or if it’s real life. I felt like I was on a movie set only it was reality, our reality and we were engaged and then I took off to cloud 9.

I was later surprised by my mother and father (who had flown in from Oahu the night before) his family and friends with a huge Thanksgiving themed engagement party at his Dad’s house. It was truly a night surrounded by nothing but happiness and love.
To say that it was all I ever dreamt of and more would be a lie, because even in my wildest fairytale girl world of dreams I could have never dreamt of something this incredible ~