Continue reading »]]> As we begin the new year, it’s a good time to really begin putting together the details for your Hawaii wedding! Even if your event is in the summer or fall, keep this in mind: other couples are beginning to plan their wedding day too, and they’re also looking to book their wedding professionals now. If you wait too long, your first and second choices may be booked by the time you get around to talking to them! So it helps to get moving with your wedding plans.

At the very least, send out emails asking for availability. For your first choice vendors, see if you can sit down with them to get a feel for their personalities and to see if they would be a good fit for your situation.

And if you’re still on the fence about hiring me as your Master of Ceremonies for your Hawaii wedding, don’t wait too long. I generally only book one wedding per weekend, and once a wedding is booked on a weekend, that weekend is no longer available. I only have one September weekend left open, a few in July, and a handful left throughout the year, so don’t wait! I’d love to see what we can do to help you create a very original and unforgettable presentation for you and your audience!

Image courtesy KYLER KWOCK / Kai Photo

Continue reading »]]> On Tuesday, November 9, I attended the NACE Hawaii monthly meeting. The keynote speaker was China Anderson with REA Events. China is an event designer–she helps you to create a beautiful and original “look” for your celebration, incorporating linens, chair covers, colors, lighting, staging, pipe & drape, and more.

China spoke about the trends that she is seeing as a Hawaii event designer. When creating your Hawaii wedding, these are good things to keep in mind.

Please note: as with any trends, trends can be fickle and can change upon the whims of the general public. These are simply generalizations based on China’s experiences.

COLORS

According to China, the following colors are on their way in for the new year:

• Purple/Eggplant
• Platinum & silvers, especially when paired with an accent color
• Burnt orange & ambers: China wasn’t sure if this is because people are gravitating more towards fall colors during this season in particular, or if this is a general incoming trend;
• The classic Black & White, which never goes out of style
• Garnet red, a very rich & dark color, and
• Champagne.

TRENDS

In addition, China is seeing these trends really develop and be requested among her clients:

• Lounge areas
• Full room draping (Pipe & drape, etc.)
• Backdrops: If you don’t have it in the budget to drape the whole room, consider draping behind the head table, main wall, cake, etc. It’s more affordable but still adds that “Wow” factor to the look of your event.
• Ceiling treatments
• Non-floral centerpieces
• Strung light strands: (like rope lights, Christmas lights, etc.). Please note that, while the lights themselves may be cheap, the labor to install and hang them may cost you. Hanging light strands correctly & safely is a labor-intensive process.
• Hanging lanterns and chandeliers
• Light monograms
• Lighting

One thing that China really emphasized was making sure that your lighting designer is qualified to help you create the right look for your event. Not all lights are created equal, and a company may rent you the lighting equipment, but

• The lights that the rental company or DJ rent out may not be adequate to create the look that you want to achieve;
• The setup guys may not know how to properly set the lights to match perfectly your colors and look (so as to not clash with your linens, drapes, etc.);
• The lighting designer needs to work closely with your event designer to achieve that look.

I learned a lot at this presentation. If you have questions about this or about event design in general, simply ask! Click here to email China and REA Events, or call them at 808-983-2800.

Tell ‘em that I sent you!

Image courtesy CHINA ANDERSON / REA Events

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Image courtesy DAVID O. BALDWIN Photography
 

When designing the layout and floorplan for your Hawaii wedding celebration, even if you don’t expect your guests to dance, it’s still important to have a dancefloor, even a small one. At the very least, you should have some open and available floor space. This is because you’ll need the space for some of the traditional things that usually happen on the dancefloor:

• The First Dance
• The Father/Daughter and Mother/Son Dances
• The Bouquet & Garter Tosses/Activities
• The Money Dance
• Any performances like a hula, song serenade, etc.

Without space, your First Dance will be awkward with you feeling cramped and moving back and forth. (And your photographer will have a difficult time capturing clean shots of your dance without any tables and guests in the way.)

Without a dancefloor, your girlfriends will be bunched up between tables trying to catch your bouquet, and for some of them, it won’t be a fair catch. (And you certainly don’t want your bouquet accidentally falling onto your guests’ meals, do you?)

Without a dancefloor, your guests will have to snake the line between tables for the Money Dance.

Without a dancefloor, your performers won’t have room to do their hula or dance presentation effectively.

Even if you don’t think your guests will dance, make sure you leave some room to accommodate the activities listed above so that you and your guests will be able to enjoy it!

Image courtesy L’Amour Photography
 

Continue reading »]]> The second day of the Hawaii Bridal Expo just finished, and it was great meeting so many brides & grooms-to-be who are planning their Hawaii weddings for later this year, next year, and beyond! It was interesting to hear your stories, plans, and dreams for your celebration, and I’m grateful that you spent the time sharing. Over the next few days, I’ll be following up with you to see what I can do, as your Master of Ceremonies and perhaps DJ for your wedding, to help you create a very fun and lively event that’s just as unique and original as you are!

It was also nice to connect with good friends & Hawaii wedding professionals, as well as meet new ones!

For those who didn’t get a chance to connect with me, why not check out my website? At the very least, you’ll get to watch some great videos of audiences having a wonderful time at my clients’ weddings.

Tomorrow is another day, and I look forward to connecting with you and getting to know you, so please drop by my booth, say hello, and enter to win Tom Haibeck’s book Wedding Toasts Made Easy, a great resource to help you, your Maid of Honor, Best Man, or anyone else who has to stand in front of your audience and speak into a microphone on your wedding day! It will help you figure out what to say without looking nervous about it!

Continue reading »]]> My good friend Chuck Lehnard with Maui Mobile Music wrote this a while back, and it’s something that I thought you’d like to know, especially if you’re on the fence about hiring a professional Master of Ceremonies & DJ for your Hawaii wedding:

You can have cold chicken, wilted flowers, disposable cameras and kool-aid to drink, but if your entertainment is good…THAT is what your friends family and loved ones will remember.

One the other hand, you can have the best cake, beautiful flowers, an open bar, the best photographer in the world (which BTW none of your guests will even know about since maybe only 5% of them will ever even see the pictures) but if your emcee, iPod, DJ, or band is bad, THAT will be what people remember. They will remember that your biggest day of your life was boring or no fun.

On your wedding day, I bet your car is good enough to drive you to and from the church, but I bet you will hire a limo.

I bet that you have a friend who can make a cake. But I bet you will hire the best bakery in town.

I bet that your friend has a great new camera from Wal-Mart, but I bet you will hire a professional photographer.

Why would you do anything less than hire a professional emcee & DJ to help make your day perfect?

Wise words indeed.
 

Image courtesy WENDY & ERIC / L’Amour Photography

Continue reading »]]> Hawaii wedding photographer Aaron Bernard with Liquid Light Images recently posted a very informative article on the Top Wedding Photography Mistakes. If you’re still in the hunt for a great wedding photographer for your Hawaii wedding, then you will find Aaron’s article most helpful.

Click here to read Aaron Bernard’s article on the Top Wedding Photography Mistakes.

Continue reading »]]> Ten years ago, I attended my cousin’s Hawaii wedding as a guest. It was gorgeous reception at the Halekulani. The room was elaborately decorated, and my cousin spared no expense making the ballroom look magnificent.

Sometime during dinner, the unexpected occurred: my cousin’s wedding ring slipped off her finger. She, her wedding party, and the families looked all over the ballroom trying to find this very expensive piece of jewelry.

And the guests? We sat there…and sat…and sat. The emcee made no announcement, and no one told us about the delay. So we sat. And sat some more. After 45 minutes of searching, they fortunately found the ring under the head table stage. But with the delay in the presentation, the guests had grown restless, and as soon as dinner ended, many of the guests found it as an appropriate time to leave. So there were only a few of us to see my cousin cut her cake, toss her bouquet, and dance her First Dance.

If the guests were properly engaged during the momentary break in the presentation, they might have felt involved and been more inclined to stay. But alas, the break allowed people to get bored, and when you get bored, you probably would want to leave the situation at the next polite opportunity, wouldn’t you?

So it was with some incredible irony that many years later, I found myself back at the Halekulani for Maren & Erik’s Hawaii wedding in October 2006, but this time, instead of a guest, I was the Master of Ceremonies for their event. Like my cousin’s wedding 10 years ago, Maren accidentally lost her wedding ring somewhere in the Grand Ballroom. Like my cousin’s wedding, Maren had 250 friends & family at the reception, and Erik, Maren, and I did not want their audience to get bored as Maren, Erik, and their families searched for the ring.

So what did I do to keep the party going? I assessed the situation and made it into the positive by involving the audience in a Scavenger Hunt. I would ask for objects, and guests needed to find those objects, collect them, and place them in front of them at their table. To win, the guests needed to collect ALL of the items; if they are even missing one, they can no longer play. So I chose items that are commonly found among the guests or in the ballroom:

• A fork
• A napkin
• A watch
• An earring (it was funny to see some ladies take off both earrings and give one to their hubby or boyfriend so he would still be in the game!)
• Anything with a lens (camera, eyeglasses, shades, etc.)
• And so forth.

So as Erik, Maren, and their families searched for the ring, the guests were preoccupied and having a great time!

After everyone had collected their items, there was one final challenge. I told the guests that there is a wedding ring that is special to Erik & Maren somewhere on the floor of the ballroom, and if a guest found it, they would instantly win, even if they were missing an object!

Immediately EVERYBODY got down and searched for the ring! Two-hundred fifty guests searched every inch of the Grand Ballroom looking for Maren’s wedding ring, until finally the groom’s uncle found it by the door. Success!

In the end, the Scavenger Hunt was one of the highlights of the celebration, and today Erik & Maren still get many compliments about how the “missing ring drama” was handled!

What could have been a disaster, with the audience sitting bored and waiting for things to happen, instead turned into a fun and lively event that kept the energy and momentum going until we were ready to continue with the presentation.

When you meet with your potential emcee for your wedding, ask him what he’ll do if you lose your ring on your wedding day, or if the power goes out during the reception, or if you get delayed to the party because the limo breaks down. Listen to his answers to how he would react. You see, anyone can host the perfect wedding reception if everything runs perfectly. But you know that nothing is perfect. Will your emcee know how to react when the unexpected occurs?

Now that’s a great question.

Continue reading »]]> In a recent conversation with Diego & Eleanor, who are having their Hawaii wedding later this month at Moana Surfrider Westin Resort, Diego had mentioned that one of his favorite pastimes was watching The World’s Strongest Man Competition on ESPN.

If you’re not familiar with The World’s Strongest Man Competition, the premise of the show is that the producers are looking for the World’s Strongest Man. To determine this, participants are given several challenges that only a Strong Man can do, like pulling dump trucks, lifting two-ton boulders, and running a time trial race while carrying weights over their shoulder. Losers get eliminated over the course of the show until only one is left–the World’s Strongest Man. That sounds like a fun enough thing to enjoy, so I thought about how to incorporate that into their wedding.

We came up with this creative activity that will happen starting at dinner and run throughout the reception, an alternative to tapping the glasses to get the newlyweds to kiss:

To prepare for this event, I will bring a 10-20 lb dumbbell weight to the reception and leave it near the stage.

If guests want to see the newlyweds kiss, instead of tapping their glasses, a guest must come to the stage and hold the dumbbell in front of her, with her arms forward and straight. If the guest is successful, Diego & Eleanor would kiss! It’s really that simple.

What makes this activity fun is the twist that is thrown in: the longer you hold out the weight, the longer the kiss will be. So if you can hold it out for a few seconds, Diego & Eleanor will kiss for a few seconds. If you hold it out for a minute, they’ll kiss for a minute. If you hold it out for longer, then we may be there the whole night!

Diego & Eleanor love the idea! We can’t wait to see how it will turn out at the wedding, and I’m certain the guests (especially his guy friends, whom Diego tells me are quite competitive) will get a kick out of it.

Continue reading »]]> It’s the middle of the week, and it’s time for this week’s edition of Why I Like…Wednesdays, where I spotlight Hawaii wedding professionals who I enjoy working with and recommend. Hopefully this will help you as you go about choosing the right wedding professionals to serve you at your Hawaii wedding.

This week’s spotlight falls on Janice & Davis Lauderdale of Video 21 Productions.

Why do I like working with them?

• They’re easy to work with. Not just at the wedding, but before and after as well. As a Master of Ceremonies that help my clients create original and unique Hawaii weddings, it is vital for me to be able to work well with wedding professionals before the wedding so as to make sure that they understand all of the creative ideas and moments that will take place. Janice & Davis are very responsive and thorough, and I greatly appreciate that. They are also great to work with after the wedding, with a very good turnaround time after the day of; you’ll often find your Same Day Edit on their blog a day or two after your wedding!
• They are fun to work with. It is important that all of your Hawaii wedding professionals “gel” together and enjoy working as a team to serve you. The crew at Video 21 are awesome team players.
• Their work is solid. Video 21′s editors have a creative eye for wedding cinematography. Whether you want a classic look or a more contemporary “Hollywood-style” production, they can help you develop that look for your video presentation.

But don’t just take my word for it: here are some clips from past events in which I was fortunate to work with them.

This one is from Ryna & James Yamada’s wedding, October 2009 at the Hale Koa Hotel and Ice Palace.

Ryna and James from Video 21 Productions on Vimeo.

Then there’s Jennifer & Gage Costa, who were such a treat to serve at their wedding in January 2010 at the Hale Koa Hotel–they had a fabulous party that included elements of Las Vegas, because they and their guests enjoy going to Sin City often.

Jennifer & Gage from Video 21 Productions on Vimeo.

Finally, from July 2009, here are ceremony highlights from Pat & Maribeth Gill’s wedding day at the Hale Koa Hotel.

Maribeth & Pat from Video 21 Productions on Vimeo.

There are many more events at which I was able to work with them, and if you check out their blog, you will see many more great examples of their work. But besides the work they do, their ease to work with and fun nature makes any wedding at which they are at much more worthwhile and enjoyable.