Mahalo!

Here's me and JonP on glorious Waimanalo beach, Oahu for our wedding. Eveything was perfect, the cd sounded good, everybody was lovely to us and there were no stresses (apart from the limo guy trying to charge us extra, even though we returned within our time limit: grrr!). Hawaiians really are the nicest people. The spirit of 'aloha', which means love, goes through everything they do and it's such a shock to be in such a caring and considerate community. Traffic stops to let anybody cross whenever they want and to let others through. People working in the service industry don't act like it's a chore to help you out or to answer your questions, and go out of their way to make sure you have a lovely time. For example, we went to The Cheesecake Factory (actually, quite a ritzy place, despite the awful name) the day after the wedding, and when they discovered we'd just got wed, they decorated our plates with sugar confetti and "Congratulations/happy/wedding/day!" drawn round the edges of our plates with chocolate sauce! Yes, we had 4 pieces of cheesecake, have you not seen us?

Thanks for the comment on the dress FP, it was indeed tricky to find a pretty dress for the beach: thank god for Monsoon! It's actually going to cost me more to clean the dress than it did to buy the dress, shoes, veil and underwear. The beauty of Ebay! The flower-wreath (haku) was probably my favourite thing, so delicate and pretty. We went to a luau (again, preferential treament) the following day and I got to make a haku from plumeria, which I kept in the fridge for the rest of the hols and every time we opened the fridge there was this gorgeous waft of frangipani.

I've listened to all the tracks and am going to get the husband to make me a copy, I'm sure he'll figure it out. He did walk in while Prefab Sprout was playing and went "Ugh, jazz!". We are so right for each other! Thanks for the creative artwork and the poem too, very touching indeed. Should you really want to see more pics, and should you have Facebook or Myspace, let me know and I'll add you as a friend.