PJ8108

Welcome to the forum and best of luck planning!

Great invitation! I hope ours comes out just as good!

Great job!

I also got mine at Staples. Best of luck!

Nice color combination!

This was really helpful, thanks!

I guess to add onto this, we're planning to honeymoon in Kauai and the book for there is awesome as well!

s most of you know, the TV series "Lost" is filmed on the island of Oahu. If you search around Google, I'm sure you'll find some more links on the filming locations within the island. Lost Virtual Tour Lost by Location Lost in Lanikai

Hearing all these great things about Kauai is getting us excited now! We're having our wedding in Oahu and honeymooning out here! Best of luck to any of you getting married out here! I heard the best book to pickup and a "must read" is The Ultimate Kauai Guidebook.

Hi everyone. I realize most of you see Dorys Fulton's name floating around for make-up. Unfortunately, Dorys was not available on the day of our wedding, but we asked her if she had recommendations for someone that is up to par with her talent. She recommended Leslie Fair. I know I'm not the only one who ran into the same problem, SO check out Leslie!

Our wedding is on August 1! Time is ticking very quickly...

Quote: Originally Posted by sodria Good to know, thanks for posting this. Can you include some pictures of your STD cards? Just included the image to posts up in this thread.

This was the STD (created with picaboo) that we sent out to our guests... Initially, we wanted to use heavy graphics, etc, but in the end, we decided to keep it simple, as we are now investing our time into boarding pass invitations. The picaboo program was so easy to use.

Jess, Thanks for posting this. Helps with some of our planning even for rehearsal dinners.

Quote: Originally Posted by Jtds2713 Shawn is amazing! I think you made a great decision! So excited for you and looking forward to seeing his fantastic work! You know how nice he is? He knows I am not booking him anymore but he still answers e-mails and is so helpful! Where are you getting married? Thanks! We're getting married at the Moana Surfrider. At this point, just trying to find the right DJ for the night. I am super excited about Shawn and the work he does though!

Your STD looks GREAT! Do you have the template by any chance? I love the flower and watermark in there and would love to use something similar, but probably change the color and placement on mine.

Morgan, My friend used this site for his wedding in Los Angeles. I looked at the site and most of the big cities are there. I can't imagine why hotels in ANY city would not want to use this site since it's free opportunities for business in a way... Hope they have the city you're looking for. BTW - I LOVE your cup idea! It's funny because I just bought those cups at Target during the Christmas clearance, but didn't have wedding ideas in my mind at that time... Instead, I bought them for us to use in our own house! I see that you guys went to Paris! That's where we got engaged! Great idea on the cups and best of luck planning!

Quote: Originally Posted by HawaiianBride2008 Does anyone have any input on the Moana Surfrider? We booked the Moana for our wedding in August. Speak with Toni and ask her for their packaging. She is wonderful to work with and can email you anything you want. They provide tons of input on what you want from the ceremony details to the banquet details. In terms of the venue, it's really classy looking and provides a great site for pictures as well. I have stayed at this hotel in the past and love the service provided. The Diamond Lawn is much better than the Terrace area, with regards to where to hold your ceremony. If there's any other details you need, let me know and I can help you out.

As I continue to plan through our wedding, I will post my findings for various things. I was hoping to filter through all the hotels via TripAdvisor and try to secure a group discount for a block of rooms. I found this to be a bit time consuming. To get around this, I found this site called Hotel Planner. It allows you to put out a request, based on your criteria, for all the hotels within the area to respond to. For me, I requested a block of 20 rooms, with a price range of $xxx.xx, and the dates of travel. Within 24-48 hours, I was responded to from at least 7-8 properties. This saved so much time for me, as I was able to accept a request from the hotel I wanted without going through hoops and hurdles to get the rate. This comes in very handy for those of you booking from say, the East Coast, where the time zone is 5 hours ahead of Hawaii. It's tough to catch them at a good time and rather than waiting for them to process your request over the phone, you instead wait for a response via email. Hope this helps...

We got our Save the Date cards from this site called Picaboo. Because we're getting married in Hawaii, we just wanted something simple to send out as a save the date. The cards that were looking for are similar to those you can find at Target or Costco, however, Picaboo allows you to customize your card beyond the boundaries of what Target and Costco can do. We used one of our pictures and played with the tool in Picaboo and were able to create a really cool Save the Date. I wish I could find a digital version of our card, but it is all contained within the tool that is available through their site. The cost for 100 cards (including envelopes) was $99. However, since we were first time visitors, they provided us with a $50 discount! So our save the date cards cost a total of $60 (including shipping)!! I was so pleased with the results as well. I plan on using their site to develop our Christmas cards and kid's cards (when we have them!). Take a look at their site if you have time. The tool is VERY simple to use. Even a caveman can do it! Hope you find this useful...

Has anyone had any success in finding a good DJ? I'm in the process right now of searching for a DJ and having limited success in reaching one. Realistically, I'm looking for someone who can cover 80s, 90s, today, and Jazz and be able to transition seamlessly throughout all of them. For me, I've been to tons of weddings and find that the music can sometimes make or break a wedding reception, especially when the majority of attendees are your friends. Given that we are having our wedding in Honolulu, I have extended the time we have at our venue to 11:30PM (as opposed to 10:30PM). I did that because I want as much time as possible with all of our guests and hoping that we can dance the night away. With that being said, music and a great DJ is very important to me. Has anyone had success in this area? What have you allotted with regards to budget for a DJ? Would it be out of line to call the local radio station and ask the DJ to perform at our wedding (not looking for the morning voice, but just someone who can play the music and play it well). I have a friend who will serve as my MC, so I don't really need the DJ to speak a word at all. Thank you for any responses/suggestions!

We recently spoke to our wedding planner and advised her of our struggles with finding someone to serve as an officiant for our wedding. I guess that is also due to the requirements I have regarding the officiant. I was really looking to have an officiant that will take some time and put together a custom message that is applicable to us, rather than some vanilla message that is given to everyone else. More importantly, I wanted someone who could put some time into getting to know us more (via phone conversations and at least one in-person meeting sometime the week we arrive, prior to the wedding). She recommended that I call Cynthia Smoot and chat with her. To my surprise, Cynthia was very happy to hear about my desires with regards to how I want the ceremony message structured. It just means so much more to the bride and groom when the officiant can actually speak about something relevant to us. Cynthia advised us that she is a writer and will be happy to take some time to get to know us any way she can. As of now, I'm looking forward to our conversations with her and crossing fingers that she can come through. I really wish I could meet and greet all of my vendors, but unfortunately, due to budget and vacation time constraints, it's just me, my computer, and my phone. If you wanted to talk to Cynthia, her website is here.

I have heard that PCC and PC are the better ones to go to there. I have about 50-75 people potentially coming out and plan to schedule a night to go to a luau there. Given that most of them have never been to Hawaii, which place would you take them to? The only one I've ever been to is Germaine's and it was just ok for me.

We evaluated the guys at Visionari. We actually narrowed our decision between Dulce and Shawn Starr. It was such a tough call because we loved both of them. You definitely booked a great set of photographers with Dulce. Best of luck with everything!

Quote: Originally Posted by mpark46 I found this link on another site. It's basically a scouting trip (with LOTS of pics) of several different venues on Oahu. Oahu Scouting Trip Pictures I wish I had access to this site with pictures before! Booking from the mainland is so hard and the pictures available on the hotel websites don't really give a good enough view of the inside to the point where you can make a decision. I wish I had time to visit all of the venues, but just ran out of vacation time to do it. We're going to be getting married at the Moana Surfrider. I'm very pleased with it. We looked at the Kahala and the Surfrider, but ultimately made the decision with the Moana because it is centrally located, making it easily accessible to our guests. The classy look throughout also stuck out to us. Kahala is very beautiful, as I did attend my best friend's wedding there. The only setback is having our guests drive to get there since you do have to proceed through a residential area to get there. The negative also is that if people are drinking, the last thing you want them to do is drive around in foreign area and make their way back to their respective hotels in Waikiki...