We wanted to get married on our anniversary date and 12/18/15 was too soon so we had a really long engagement. But it gave us lots of time to plan since a destination wedding can sometimes be stressful. There are a lot of little details you don’t realize you have to think of. Also 12/18/15 fell on a Friday and 12/18/16 fell on a Sunday and since Maui’s sound curfew ends at 10pm it felt appropriate to end a wedding earlier in the evening on a Sunday rather than on a weekend evening.

We wanted our wedding to be classy and elegant, simple and beautiful, light airy and dreamy, earthy and spiritual, and fun. And we got exactly what we wanted. We wouldn’t change a thing. We ordered blue personalized wedding party favors and had them delivered to Maui. At first we toyed with the idea of parasols since December can be either rainy or really sunny and a parasol would shield both water and sun, but since it was a destination wedding we wanted items that would travel easily. We chose personalized fans instead that were inscribed with our hashtag: #dtandjoel121816. We also chose shot glasses, since we both collect shot glasses from everywhere we visit. We have like 60 now. Plus we have lots of friends who love to drink. We found a periwinkle ring pillow on Etsy and a flower girl basket on eBay. I also started looking for blue champagne for the toasts and came across Blanc de Bleu online and Sugar Beach was able to bring it in for us. We wanted everything as blue as possible. Even our wedding cake was blue velvet at our request which Chef Lee happily obliged.

We realized that it would be too hard to memorize our vows and actually not recommended since so much is going through your head the day of, you’re bound to flub something up. But we didn’t want to read them from a simple piece of paper. So we found a company online Scrolls Unlimited, Inc. with a quick turnaround time and had our vows formatted and printed on custom blue 5×7 scrolls with grey finials. They even had a beautiful wooden box that fit the two scrolls so that we could store them and pull them out every anniversary and read them to remember our promises to each other.

Something that was a social media trend at the time was the Mannequin challenge. Joel really wanted to try to do it at our wedding. We had a second meeting with the videographers, Driftwood Films, a couple days before the wedding. We mentioned the mannequin challenge to them thinking someone else would record it on one of our phones, which someone did, but Driftwood films also filmed it and edited it along with the music we chose for the wedding highlight video. They posted the 1 minute video the next day. It was such an unexpected surprise. It turned out so well and we got so many compliments. We are stoked that they did that and it makes us even more excited for our wedding video. It just shows that they love what they do and are willing to go the extra mile to make their clients happy.

 

 

We had a vision for the decor, but weren’t sure what types of flowers would be readily available in Maui, so we let Darren take on those details and entrusted him with the design and decor. Neither of us knew much about flowers, but we saw Darren’s previous weddings and knew we didn’t have to worry about it. We just knew we wanted a light driftwood arch to go with our color palette and vision and Darren found one to our liking and adorned it beautifully with hydrangeas, larkspur, blue thistle and white orchid stems. The centerpieces he made were gorgeous. And he even suggested bouquets for the best gals which we hadn’t thought of that added detail added to the beauty of the day. He even made extra boutonnieres for the best men when we thought only the grooms would be getting them. Every little detail is appreciated.

 

LGBTQ-friendly wedding vendors

Photographer: Love and Water Photography 
Videographer: Driftwood Films
Wedding venue: Sugar Beach Events 
Florist: Petals 
Planner: Bliss Wedding Design & Spectacular Events 
Attire: Men’s Wearhouse 
Catering: Sugar Beach Events 
Officiant: Kahu Kale Ka’alekahi 
Polynesian Entertainment: Manutea Nui E
Rentals: Island Rents  

equality-minded LGBTQ-friendly wedding vendors