Home Was The Perfect Destination For These Hawaii Natives

Samantha Melei
September 11, 2019
Categories: Real Weddings, The Blog
Tags: Hawaii Venues

For these Hawaii natives, choosing a destination location which just so happened to be home for them was a no brainer! The Four Seasons Maui was the venue of choice, exactly what they envisioned for their tropical soiree filled with palm leaves, a gorgeous floral arbor and the cutest baby pineapples you’ve ever seen. With a completely outdoor wedding, from ceremony to reception, Aria Studios had all of the natural lighting you (and a film photographer) could dream of! Country Bouquets Maui crafted the picture-perfect tropical florals from bouquets to centerpieces full of the most stunning colors and flower crowns to match! Take a peek below and read how the bride found her dream dress just in time!

From the Bride…When we first started planning, we knew we wanted two things: to get married in Hawaii and to capture the tropical vibrancy of a sunset. We’re both from Oahu, so choosing the Four Seasons Maui as our venue felt like the perfect mix of home and destination. Everything came together on the big day. We got to celebrate with friends and family from all over, and every detail we deliberated on and dreamed of – food, flowers, linens, and so on – were all realized in the beautiful Maui surroundings. It was a day filled with laughter, joyous tears, delicious food, and so much love. It was perfect.

So guilty admission, I didn’t realize how far in advance you’re supposed to find a dress! Eight months out, I had been to numerous dress shops and tried on dozens of dresses, but I didn’t quite love any of them. Still, I felt like I had to choose in order to get the dress in time. But the thought gnawed at me. Maybe there wasn’t such a thing as “THE dress” or maybe I just started too late to have enough time to find it. And then I saw Alexandra Grecco’s gowns, and even though everyone told me to stop looking, I couldn’t help it. The Dress Theory was having a trunk show that weekend, so I went… just to put it to rest, I told myself. But the moment I slipped on the Iris gown, I knew. It felt so right (the fact that the liner was super soft probably helped lol) and if there was a way, I had to wear this dress at my wedding. The wonderful ladies at The Dress Theory were able to do a rush order of the dress, giving us plenty of time for alterations and I was so happy to wear THE dress for the wedding!

When it came to our design decisions about the wedding, we went with the idea of a “pineapple sunset” to reflect the colors and vibe we were aiming for: tropical, vibrant balanced by softer tones, relaxed but stunning. I spent hours combing through photos on Pinterest and Instagram, at first saving anything that caught my eye. Then going through and narrowing down the saved images really helped me define what I liked and what I was trending towards, although for a good while it looked like I had three different wedding styles in the works! I even made terrible cut and paste images from those photos to see how different elements might look together – the table, the plates, and glasses, the flowers. It was my life for a good chunk of a year, but I’m happy to say it all paid off in the end!

From the Photographer, Jess Nakasone of ARIA Studios…We had an amazing time working with Annie and Justin. Their colorful designs and decision to have an all outdoor wedding paired perfectly with our company because as film photographers, WE LOVE GORGEOUS NATURAL LIGHT!! Their ceremony site was located on Molokini Lookout which is on a golf course and it was a very sunny day but film photography is amazing at handling really bright light. We’ve been offering film photography to our clients for several years now and we love the look and feel of film. Film captures light in really beautiful ways and leaves us with light bathed images that give us all the feels.

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