Well, we're back home in Sydney now and we're officially hitched! It was an unforgettable two weeks. Fair warning: there are a LOT of details coming here...if you want the highlight reel, skip to the video at end of this post! I figure this blog is really about reflecting on life events both now as they happen and looking back in the future, so, while I write like I'm informing a third party, I know the main audience is Pickle and myself, so I really want to capture the details of our wedding trip. But, if you're not Pickle or me and you'd like to come along, you're very welcome ;) |
Wednesday, July 1
Thursday, July 2
Friday, July 3
Saturday, July 4
Sunday, July 5
Monday, July 6 - Wedding Day!
I can't say that the ceremony was flawless and everything went "as planned" - but I kind of loved the mishaps, as they made for some pretty good laughs...Pickle wrote a song to accompany his vows - he played guitar and sang to me, and it was SO perfect. It also drew a little crowd of Japanese tourists (pretty much the only people on the beach), which wouldn't have been a problem if they'd taken some photos or recorded from a distance, but they basically joined the wedding party until a few angry stares and mouthed words from the mother of the bride and more polite gestures from our photographer cued them to move along. The videographer didn't turn the mic on (he had ONE job!) before handing it off, so the audio from both my sister's and my parents' speeches wasn't recorded. This was actually really unfortunate for my sister because she did an amazing job during the ceremony and left us all teary-eyed. No worries - he just re-recorded them after the ceremony while we took photos so he could edit it in later (though apparently he didn't tell them he was video recording and my sister said she rolled her eyes and made faces as she read when she made mistakes, thinking only the audio was being captured). And my parents...oh my poor parents! In their speech, my mom mentioned places I'd moved and travelled to (with the message ending with the sentiment that we're always welcome home)...my sis and brother-in-law said during the re-recording, she got flustered and just sort of started yelling locations (my brother-in-law did the best impression: "Miami University, Florida, Saudi ArabiAustraliiiiaaaaa" <--- this text does not do it justice. I laughed 'til I cried when he did it, and I'm laughing right now just recalling it! My mom said my dad "thought he'd be cool" and started talking without reading from their script and ended up repeating himself and "sounding like Rain Man" (my family is nothing if not good at taking digs!). Anyway, I'll be very interested to see how this all plays out in the wedding video, but to me, the wedding ceremony was perfect in all of its imperfections! After the ceremony and some photos on the beach, our family boarded the bus to return to the hotel and Pickle and I took off with our photographer for some shave ice and more photos at Lanai Lookout. After that, he brought us back to the hotel where we grabbed some lunch and attempted a quick nap before the luau.
En lieu of a reception, we hosted everyone at the Paradise Cove Luau. It's rated as top on the island, and I'd attended before and loved it, so we stuck with what (we) know. It was SUCH a fun evening! I was worried everyone might be too exhausted to enjoy themselves (particularly the ladies after our ridiculously early start to the day), but there was so much to do, (eat!) and see that (despite the bags under my eyes in all of the photos and the fact that they were never really open all of the way), we were all engaged and alert enough to enjoy the event. Paradise Cove has heaps of included pre-event activities like making flower crowns, temporary tattoos, spear throwing, exotic bird encounters, the shower of flowers, and a lot more. The imu ceremony unveils the pig from the earth, after which everyone is called to the buffet dinner. The show is fantastic - good variety (I think the family favorite was the fire dancers), perfect level of crowd participation and long enough to make it worth it, but not so long you start to wonder when it will wrap up! It was a fantastic finale to a wonderful day :) (We don't have wedding photos yet - this is not what we wore to our wedding - but here are some photos from the luau. The last one is from Waimanalo Beach, where we got married...)
Tuesday, July 7
Wednesday, July 8
Thursday, July 9
Friday, July 10
Saturday, July 11
Afterward, we stopped by Akaka Falls briefly (where I found a baby chameleon on the path!) before making our way to the Hilo Farmer's Market, where we snagged some spring rolls, dumplings, Spam musubi (ball of sushi rice topped with grilled Spam and wrapped with nori - seaweed), dragon fruit, sweet red bean pastries, and purple sweet potato tapioca. We scarfed it, and Pickle took quite the nap while I looked through our photos and played with the gekkos in our apartment. We had a late dinner at Moon and Turtle before hitting the hay.
Sunday, July 12
Monday, July 13
After a quick stop at Target (not just because I love and miss our U.S. Target, but because I needed to buy some new board shorts after Pickle hung mine out to dry on the balcony at the Coconut and they blew away during the night!), we checked into the Royal Kona Resort, quickly changed into our swimming gear, and headed back out for our final adventure of the trip: a night snorkel with manta rays. There are a number of companies that do this, and we went with Sea Paradise because they weren't quite as large as some but allowed enough passengers to require enough lights to draw the rays. The process is that these companies bring bight spotlights out into the water, which draw plankton - which then, in turn, draw the manta rays, as this is their food source. We were out in the water for an hour, and it was pretty surreal - the manta rays looked so alien-like in the blue water under the glow of the bright lights. They circled gracefully over and over, sometimes brushing up against us, but always in complete control of their path. It was an amazing final adventure to our trip!