Hitched!
What a day! Getting married in Kauai was supposed to be without the usual stress of a big mainland wedding. However, just as I was closing up yesterday’s relaxed weblog, the weather turned South.
We figured the only thing that could really ruin our day was if we had a rare persistent rain storm. Well…sure enough about 1pm or so it started raining and it didn’t stop until probably 5pm or so.
In the midst of the rain, Suzanne had to get her hair done in town. So at around 2:45pm she set off into town over the winding mountain-side road. I lounged around reading a book while watching the CNN Katrina coverage. However, my own stress started to build around 4:15pm when Suzanne became overdue. Given the kind of road she had to travel on, I had feared an accident or something since I knew she’d want to be back in time to comfortably prepare herself for our wedding.
So when I called her, she was actually in Princeville, a nearby neighboring city. As it turned out, the local grocery marts in Hanalei did not have the kind of flowers she and the hair dresser had planned to put in her hair. So she was in Princeville buying flowers and getting them placed in her hair with the hair dresser who had followed her into that town. This ate up much of her time, but I was glad to know she was okay.
She finally returned at about 4:40pm. We were to meet our wedding coordinators at 5:30pm and had targeted at 5:20pm departure time. Just what a girl wants, just over 30 minutes to do her makeup and put on her wedding dress. I on the other hand had no trouble. But I knew this was very stressful for her.
In the end, we got there and the rain gave us just enough of a window to proceed with things. So we hurriedly gathered on the beach and got quick instructions for what to do. Unfortunately, it’ll probably look a bit rushed on the video as we were very unrehearsed and raw. Perhaps that’s the way it should be. Considering it Kauai Wedding Unplugged.
But things got going quickly. The native Hawaiian officiate, Leilani, started some chanting and blessed the sand that I was standing on and we were off and running. I wish I could tell you all the things that she said, but things were pretty much a blur. Your head starts to spin when you are having a big moment.
When we got to the repeat-after-me stuff, I did pretty well through the first few lines and then I lost. Yep, that’s what I said, I lost it. There’s was an excruciatingly long (for me) pause while I welled up with emotion and then cried the lines out. I was quite surprised and it definitely sent Suzanne on an emotional turn. But in the end, we both got through our lines and were pronounced Man and Wife. It was beautiful.
As we completed the official service, we looked up at the skies and they were quite threatening. We were just sure we were about to get more rain. So the photographer put us through a sprint of photographs. I’m fearing that they did not come out so well since we were on a dead run to get them all in. In addition, I’m worse than crash dummy about getting into posed positions. I’m sure I look so unnatural.
We closed the night in Princeville by having a nice dinner at La Cascata in the Princeville Hotel. The food was wonderful, though the service was interesting — our waiter’s name was Sequoia, so just imagine.
Since Java Kai has limited bandwidth this morning, I’ve only been able to upload a few new pics, but you should be able to see them by clicking on the collage below.
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