Surprise!

"I've got some good news and I've got some bad news," my Dad said as he approached me and Aaron at my sister's graduation party. He was holding a file folder and Aaron and I glanced from his face to the folder and back to his face, getting more and more worried by the second. "The bad news is that you're going to have to re-visit the place were Aaron was attacked by the shark.  But the good news is... it's because you're going to be staying at the Four Seasons for your honeymoon!"

Cue an ear-splitting scream from me and stunned silence from Aaron. And then I went from screaming to crying and Aaron stayed with stunned silence.

Once we got over the initial shock my dad explained what was in the folder- two gift certificates for 4 days at the Four Seasons. Apparently they're the discount certificates given to travel agents by hotels, my dad found them on eBay. Apparently when travel agents don't have enough time to use the certificates they're given they can sell them instead! So my dad put each one in one of our names so that we could spend an entire week at the Four Seasons for our honeymoon.

I'm not a high-maintenance bride at all, but now I can admit that part of me was a bit bummed by the fact that we were going to be spending our wedding night sleeping on my cousin's futon in their remodeled garage.  But I told myself that, for a dream wedding in Maui, I'd sleep on bed of nails in a crack-house basement. And Aaron and I can really have a great time anywhere, we'd make the best of it and it was going to be an great honeymoon anyway. But NOW it's going to be an incredible, too-good-to-be-true, this-isn't-my-life, walking-around-the-Four-Seasons-waiting-to-be-kicked-out-of-this-fairy-tale-at-any-moment, honeymoon!!!

Of course, no one thought to take pictures of us when we got the news but these pictures were taken shortly after, just to give you an idea of how we we took the news:

Oh happy spurt of happy spurts! We really feel like the luckiest couple that ever decided to get married. It's an incredible feeling. Man, do I love surprises.

What about you, loyal few blog followers? Did your family ever completely catch you by surprise with something like this? (It can be wedding related or not, since I don't know many married people.)

Spotlight on our photographer: Benja Iglesis

Another person that the island of Maui has been kind enough to bring into my life is Benja Iglesis.

The first time I met Ben I was on my cousin's a boat just finishing up a snorkeling expedition at Molokini. Ben was on a different boat, filled with tourists, just coming in to Molokini for a snorkeling expedition. His boat pulled up to our boat and my cousins exchanged pleasantries with Ben and the rest of the crew and in a rare moment I found it hard to speak because Ben was one of the hottest guys I had ever seen! (Sorry ladies, he's married!) 

My cousins told me that he was a Chilean scuba dive master who worked on a boat with a friend of theirs. What I didn't know until recently is that Ben is the most amazing photographer! His underwater images will blow your freaking mind. (I had a picture he took of a green sea turtle as my laptop background forever!) And without even knowing if he can do weddings I asked him to photograph mine. 

Turns out the guy's wedding photos are also incredible, above or below the water...

all photos courtesy of Benja Iglesis for more information and some incredible views of underwater sea life please check out his website  www.benjaiglesis.com.

Spotlight on our wedding officiate - Kimokeo Kapahulehua

He's in!!!!

My cousin just called to tell me that Kimokeo Kapahulehua just

said that he would officiate our wedding!

There is seriously NO OTHER person that we could think of to marry us. It needed to be him. But he's so busy and he's such a mysterious guy that it was so hard to get ahold of him. (I have a feeling that Jane just ran into him on the island and that's how this all happened.)

I am so thankful and feel so blessed to have someone like Kimokeo marrying us. He is truly a special person and enriches the lives of everyone he meets by teaching them about the true spirit of Aloha and the amazing Hawaiian culture and beliefs. 

He changed our lives so drastically after the shark attack. He alone took this horrific experiences and turned it into one of the most spiritual and special events of our lives. Aaron and I sat there in that hospital room thinking that this was something we would just have to "get through" until Kimokeo walked into the room and showed us that this was actually a blessing that we were lucky enough to experience. And it took a very special and powerful person to pull us from the depths of our fears and depression and not only show us but make us really feel how lucky we are. 

And I believe that some of his positive energy and luck will not only be transfered into our daily lives but it will also now be infused into our marriage. 

Mahalo nui loa Uncle Kimo!!!

Just to give you an idea of the amazingness that is Kimokeo, here is a segment of the shark ceremony that he conducted for Aaron and the two men that helped pull him out of the ocean.

no bouquet

So... I don't want a bouquet.

 

This is something that people find extremely shocking. It's apparently so shocking to them that once they get over the shock and find the ability to do anything but stare at me open mouthed, they begin to beg and plead with me to reconsider.  "But you have to have a bouquet," is usually one of the first things they say to me. And my response is always, "Why?" And they don't really have a good answer- "because it's pretty" and "what else are you going to hold?"

How about, I'm pretty & I'll hold onto my Dad's arm and then Aaron's hand?

I just don't get them!!!! It's like the bride walks down the isle clutching it like someone's going to steal it and then gets to the alter and goes 'wait, why am I holding this?' and hands it off to someone how now has to TWO of these stupid things to hold. And then at the end of the night she launches it at a group of her friends in a bizarre (and way to often barbaric) ritual. 

Why???

No thanks, I'll save that money and spend it on something that I don't have to throw at people.

moving, rocking & rolling

Sorry to my loyal blog readers (all 5 of you) I haven't had time to update for a few days- I've been helping my little sister (MOH) move into the apartment down the stairs from me, in 100 degree temperatures. It's not been much fun. But hopefully she'll make it up to me by being the best MOH ever.  :)

I DO have a lot to blog about but that will have to wait, because on top of moving my little sister I also have the first music gig of my life tomorrow that I'm busy practicing for!

FYI- I am NOT a musician but all of my friends are and so it was inevitable that one day I would be involved somehow. I am singing back up for my amazingly talented friend John Graney in the midst of a band who is also filled with amazingly talented musicians. I am totally, utterly, leaps and bounds out of my league. I have a fear that this gig will be like those dreams where you show up for the first day of class only to find out that it's actually the last day of class and you have to take a final that you're completely unprepared for.  But I'm practicing my BUTT of, so hopefully that is one dream that won't come true.

The best part about this whole experience, besides having an outlet for my insatiable need to sing, is that this means that Aaron and I get to spent a lot more time together because he's playing drums! And on top of that Erik (my best friend and "man of honor") is playing bass!

So keep your fingers crossed for me tomorrow, I am so completely nervous/excited.

The great "Mr & Mrs" compromise of '08

Of course after I wrote the blog about not mentioning my parents names on my wedding invitation my family got into it with me about that on Father's Day, of all days. 

I plead my case about hating the look of a formal invites, my cousin and my mom ganged up on me about how it's the way it's "supposed to be" and my sister just begged yelled at us all to shut up. 

But out of the argument came a compromise whereby my invitations stay simple and un-tainted by middle names and honorific titles and my parents still get all the bill-paying cred.

And I think this is a good idea for anyone who goes the way of non-tradish. wedding invite.

The return address on the envelope will be my parents & the RSVP cards will be addressed to my parents, full names and all.

I can live with that. I don't like it, but that's compromise for ya.

A Proud Day

Today saw the first legal same sex marriages in California!!! 

Thank you very much California for FINALLY allowing gays the basic human right to be married to the person they love. 

It's a proud moment for my state and, on a wider scale, for human decency in general. 

pricey sanchez

I just re-designed my blog! I'm pretty happy with it.

I also found  the pictures of me in my favorite wedding dress that I couldn't afford...

  

This was the dress that I had envisioned myself in when I started looking for dresses.  

It's an Angel Sanchez design, and you can't really tell from these pictures but it has the most incredible bohemian style beadwork woven into the bodice. 

I can't find a picture of the dress online. The only thing I found was a dress by Angel Sanchez it's the same style, but no beading, and it's on a much better model... 

  

I fell so much in love with the Sanchez dress but it was over $5,000! So I took a few pictures and then said goodbye. 

two thousand and wait a minute

So the lovely (and newly affianced!) Karah of bellabykarah.com and I have been working our butts off to get the invitations finished. I've spent a lot more time than I thought I would coming up with the exact wording of the most important awesome party of my life.

When I got engaged I never thought that figuring out what words to use would be harder than figuring out what invitations to use!

If my mom had it her way the invitation (and the whole wedding!) would be very formal. According to her and all the etiquette books, since my parents are paying for the wedding, our invitations should read (names have been changed):

Mr & Mrs Blah Blah Blah III

request the honour of your presence

at the marriage of their daughter,

Blah Blah

to

Mr. Blah Blah Blah

son of 

Blah & Blah Blah

on Friday the tenth of October

two thousand and eight

...and so on and so forth in way too many words.

There was NEVER a time where I even so much as considered using an invitation like that for my wedding. Even when I was young I always thought that kind of wording was totally lame. No one talks like that, why are you putting on airs and pretending to be something your not just because you're getting married? Isn't this an invitation for a ceremony that is supposed to represent the state of your relationship thus far? And I know for a fact that our relationship would never "request the honour of your presence" no matter how much we wanted you there.  Our relationship would never refer to ourselves by our full names- our relationship rarely ever even uses our first names!  And our relationship would certainly never spell out the year 2008. In fact, our relationship gets ANGRY when it sees dates and times spelled out completely in words!!!!

When I first started planning the invites I found myself actually stressing over the wording of the invitation, I even  googled the proper way to word a wedding invitation. And then when I started the first draft I caught myself actually spelling out "two thousand and" wait a minute!!! What am I doing!?

And that's when I came to terms with the fact that there's no reason why your invitation can't be as personable and easy-going as your relationship. It's okay to have an informal wedding invitation to a wedding. In fact, I think informal invitations are friendlier and lot more, well... inviting!

In the end I decided to word our invitation as such:

Please join

Megan & Aaron

as they exchange their marriage vows

Friday, October 10th, 2008

at sunset

on Keawakapu beach

Maui, Hawaii

reception & rock'n'roll to follow

When Aaron saw the last sentence he started shaking his head and said "your such a nerd." "Oh no, do you not like it?" I had totally thought it was something he would appreciate. But then he started laughing and said, "No, it's perfect!" And we high-fived. 

And that is why you will never be cordially invited to anything we do.

as a side note- 

It's nice to know that I'm not alone in this wedding revolution. The Offbeat Bride blog has been playing a major part in easing my anti-traditional wedding anxiety. Especially when I stumbled upon their wedding invitation wording that won't make you barf entry.
YAY for that! No one likes to barf.