Thanks to Top Wedding Sites for Posting My Article

Thank you to Team Wedding for posting an article I wrote:

"Finding Quality Destination Wedding Packages"

The article highlights things I recommend brides look for when booking a wedding in a destination location with vendors your not familiar with.

 You can find the article here:

http://www.topweddingsites.com/wedding-blog/destination-weddings/finding-quality-destination-wedding-packages

Top 10 Reasons to Have a Maui Wedding

10. You are Surrounded by Natural Beauty

Maui is truly one of the most beautiful places on earth to have a wedding for so many reasons. Maui boasts gorgeous and uncrowded beaches with powder fine sand. Sunsets consisting of blue sky with white clouds, and as the sun sets, the light fills the clouds, changing their colors from orange to pink and sometimes a fiery red. Flowers are in bloom year round, filling the air with sweet smells and this is all happening as the trade winds keep the temperature ideal with the perfect warm breeze blowing across your skin and through your hair.

Baldwin Beach

Brides find that minimal wedding decorations are needed as nature has already created the perfect venue. Beautiful black lava rock, bright green sea grasses and golden and white sand create the base of the look, while tall swaying palm trees make for the perfect background silhouettes in the distance. This all makes for the perfect canvas for wedding photography that dreams are made of.

9. Year Round Great Weather

Having a Maui wedding any time is easy when the average temperature is in the 80's 'Year Round'. Just imagine yourself having a breathtaking beach wedding with blue water in the background and golden sand at your feet, while escaping below freezing temperatures and snow at home. Get married and get a tan, all while your neighbors are scraping their car windows and building snow men at home.

8. A Wedding You and Your Guests Will Never Forget

Having a Maui wedding is and extremely memorable experience for all involved. Since you are traveling to an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, you feel like it is really an occasion created on your behalf. You feel like royalty when all your friends and family show up, just for you, to take part in your amazing wedding experience.

7. Fun Activities

Maui is a great place to have a wedding, because there are so many fun activities the island has to offer. From whale watching, helicopter rides, zip lines through the forest, snorkeling with sea turtles, para-sailing, hiking, surfing and just relaxing on the beach. Maui has it all for fun and amazing pre- and post- wedding activities making your wedding a fun filled experience for all whom join you.

6. Include Your Honeymoon

 Maui Honeymoon Photography

Having a Maui Wedding is perfect because you can bundle your honeymoon, saving on additional costs. In addition you don't have to travel to a new location saving precious honeymoon time. To make your Wedding night even more special, if staying at a hotel, you can have one night of an upgraded room for extra honeymoon fun.

5. Skilled Wedding Professionals

Maui is one of the top places in the world for destination weddings and the island is full of amazing wedding professionals. You can assure you will get a quality wedding if you do your research. If you go for a Maui wedding package for $1500 and up you can usually assure you will get great quality and everything you need for the perfect Maui beach wedding.

4. A Maui Wedding is Truly Affordable

Having a Maui Wedding is actually quite affordable. Considering that the average weddings cost is $19,581 according to http://www.costofwedding.com.

Picture this cost break down:

• Round Trip Air Fair for Two (have seen it as low as $350 per round trip ticket): $1400

• Simple Maui Beach Wedding including:      $1595
• Professional photography
• Professional minister
• Professional floral
• Up to 40 guests

•  Hotel Accommodations for 10 nights @ $350 per night (with tax): $3700

•  Food $400 day for 10 days: $4000

•  Rental car 10 days: $600

•  Fun and activities: $1000

•  Reception Dinner for 10 people: $3000

• Additional things (getting brides hair done, small wedding cake, wedding music): $1000

Total cost of this simple Maui wedding with enough money for great food, amazing accommodations, fun and adventure for an intimate wedding $16,295.

Just keep in mind that if you wanted a budget Maui wedding the above cost could be cut in almost half by doing one simple thing, renting a condo. You can find a very nice condo for $175 to $300 per night (for a multiple night rental). If you throw in the cost savings of cooking in your unit, the savings really begins to pile up. Have a fun and relaxed beach BBQ wedding reception on the grounds of your condo and having a Maui wedding is affordable for almost any wedding budget.

Whatever you do, don't skimp on getting a quality minister, beautiful floral and an amazing Maui wedding photographer. The photographer is the most important as they will create a record of your amazing wedding experience, so "Do Not" skimp here. When you get older is when you will regret skimping on your wedding photography. As you age your wedding photos become one of your most treasured walks down memory lane as a beautiful vibrant young couple.

3. World Class Accommodations

Maui has some spectacular hotels, condos and private residences, with grounds available for your Maui wedding. Most Maui hotels have amazing sprawling grounds: with lush vegetation, beautiful fountains and in most cases perfect beach access great for your Maui wedding. You can also rent private residences with immaculate grounds and truly gorgeous accommodations, making for the perfect all-in-one Maui Wedding location (wedding venue and accommodations). My favorite resorts are in Wailea on the south shore of Maui. The Grand Wailea boasts a 50,000 square foot spa and acres of pools and water slides. The Four Seasons is a world class resort with amazing service, fine dining and spacious rooms. The Fairmont Kea Lani hotel even offers private bungalows with your own private soaking pool!

2. Relaxing Wedding Experience

The best thing about a Wedding in Maui is how relaxing it is. There is just no better place to relax, unwind and have an amazing beach wedding. Hire a wedding planning company to handle the details, then just show up and say "I do".

1. Intimate Wedding Experience

Maui Beach Weddings

Come and have a Maui wedding with only the people that mean the most to you. Forget fifth cousin Louie and his wife Barbara, just showing up for the $50 per plate dinner and open bar. Bring your closest inner circle of friends and family you can truly be yourself with, and come to Maui to have the wedding of a lifetime.

Maui Wedding Packages Make for Easy Wedding Planning

Most people who get married in Maui are not from the island and it is hard to know where to start when planning your wedding on the island of Maui. Finding a Maui wedding package can really help with the most important aspects of the planning such as: photographer, minister, floral and wedding location.

A quality Maui Wedding Package will consist of:

1.  A Maui Wedding Photographer that creates amazing images

 2. A Maui Wedding Minister that has a beautiful ceremony and looks great in pictures.

3. Gorgeous Maui Wedding Floral

White Sands Bouquet

4. Beautiful Maui Beach Wedding Location

If you make sure that your Maui wedding package has these extremely important key wedding elements, you will have an amazing Maui wedding to remember forever.

Maui Wedding Packages: The Perfect Place for a Second Marriage

Second marriages are the perfect time to finally have the wedding that you really wanted. This isn’t the first go around, so you don’t have to do just what your mom and dad wanted you to do, this is your shot to have your dream wedding.

 

Maui Wedding packages are the perfect way to have a beautiful Maui beach wedding, while leaving the most important planning details to someone else. It is very important to remember that not all Maui Wedding Packages are created equal. 

Maui Wedding packages can vary greatly in quality and often people try to provide you with a lot of fluff just to make it look like you’re getting a lot, just masking what you don’t get, quality. There is no amount of butterfly releases, sparkling cider toasts and custom made marriage licenses that can compensate for the lack of “Quality Photography”. When you look back on your wedding you are not going to think about the butterflies you released or how delicious your sparkling cider was, you are going to curl up with your wedding photos and take a stroll down memory lane. Just make sure your stroll down memory lane isn’t with poorly lit photos that were processed by someone who didn’t know how to use Photoshop enough to take the shine off your face and remove the scuba diver walking out of the water in the background.



Looking for a Maui Wedding Photographer or Maui Wedding Packages?

Maui Wedding Packages - Easy Reception Locations

If you are having a small Maui beach wedding you may be wondering, where can I go to have a great little reception? When looking for a great place on Maui to have a small reception to accompany your Maui wedding package you actually have a wide variety of options. A great deal of Maui's restaurants are well equipped and prepared to accommodate your small group as long as they have enough prior notice. 

Maui Wedding  - Easy reception ideas

How do you find out which small reception location is best for you? The ultimate way to find out which location is best for your small party is ask the wedding professionals you are working with. If your wedding contacts have lived and worked in Maui long enough, they have frequented most of the restaurants on the island. So tap into their knowledge of restaurant sizes, quality of cuisine, price, if the restaurants have a banquet room and quality of service at each establishment.

Once you have decided on a couple of different restaurant choices call them and see how they can accommodate your party. Some restaurants may have a modified menu for larger parties and also allow substitutions at your request for small menu modifications. Some locations can even make your cake for you,  saving you the hassle and additional coordination of your wedding cake.

Maui Wedding Packages -Cake

An added bonus of getting restaurant recommendations from your trusted wedding professional is you really have no need to have this part coordinated for you. People often get coordinators on Maui because the don't know whom to trust and want to ensure they have a quality small reception on there wedding day. Once you know you have quality restaurants to choose from you can call on your own with confidence and save yourself money and know your getting exactly what 'you' wanted, because you hand tailored it to your personal tastes.

Another great idea for your small Maui wedding reception is to have a personal chef or caterer come to your rented condo, house, villa or large hotel room. Have your personal chef or caterer create a custom menu just for your occasion, but don't forget to ask them to add some of their signature dishes to the menu and prepare to be wowed. 

Maui is really not a difficult place to plan your own small wedding reception as long as you have a little bit of direction. If you have found an excellent vendor providing quality Maui wedding packages they will be able to provide you with recommendations of some of the best restaurants, personal chefs and caterers on the island to help with your small wedding reception. So tap into your Maui wedding vendor's knowledge and make the reception you want.


Looking for a Maui Wedding Photographer?

Maui Wedding Packages - How Much Photography is Enough?

When booking any Maui wedding package it is very important to ask the question 'how much photography is enough for my needs'? It is a question not very many brides ask in the planning stages, when they really should. People often get so wrapped up in booking the wedding, they don't think enough about how many poses they want with their family and friends.

Maui Wedding Packages - Group shot

Since our blog is tailored to suit small weddings and Maui Beach Weddings, usually under 50 people, brides just assume that 1 hour is plenty of photography time for their wedding. Look at the photography example below and see just how much time is used throughout the ceremony, pictures of the bride & groom and family shots.

Total Photography time (included in package): 1 hour

Ceremony: 20 min

Bride and groom shots: 20-30 min.

That leaves you with roughly 10 to 20 minutes for family/wedding party shots. When we shoot the family and group wedding photos it usually takes 4-5 minutes for each pose on average (moving people in and out, catching the children that need to be in the shot that are running half way down the beach, making sure everyone is looking nice and smiling, getting the pose right, then finding all the right people for the next shot and posing them). This estimate may seem high, but it is really just an average, because once you put grandma and grandpa in a few shots, which can sometimes take 7-10 minutes just to get posed and photographed, it is evident why we estimate 4-5 minutes per shot average.

Here is an example of just a few shots:

Bride, Groom, Bride's Immediate family (parents, siblings) -5min

Bride, Groom, Grooms's Immediate family (parents, siblings) -5 min

Bride, Groom, brides's grandma and grandpa -5min

Bride, Groom, Groom's grandma and grandpa -5min

Bride and Maid of honor- 5 min

Groom and Best Man -5 min. 

= 30 min (from above family and friends poses) + Ceremony 20 + Bride and Groom shots 30 min = 1 hour 20 min.

It is important to have realistic expectations of what you are going to get for your money.

If you want shots with family and you have more than 20 people in your group, make a list of all of the groups you want. This will either help you understand that you most likely need to upgrade the amount of photography or will really pair down how many family photos you want.

Maui Beach Wedding - Maluaka Beach

If you take anything away from this post, please remember, you are the 'Super Stars' of your wedding.  You need to be sure to have enough photography time dedicated to just yourselves. If you want lots of family included photos you need additional photography time. In the whole scheme of the entire wedding cost, an extra few hundred bucks to get that extra 1/2 hour of photography you really want is nothing, especially if got the images you dreamed about, on your special day.   

Looking for a Maui Wedding Photographer?

Maui Beach Weddings: 4 Tips You Need to Know

When having a Maui beach wedding there are a few tips that brides often don't think about, and wedding planners or other Maui wedding professional don't usually tell you to avoid information overload.

TIP #1 - Don't Wear High Heals On The beach

Maui Beach Wedding footwear

I know you just found the most beautiful pair of high heals that go perfectly with your dress and will match your tiara perfectly :), but you don't need them. It is hard enough to walk on the beach in flip flops or bare feet sometimes, but those heals just aren't going to cut it. Ditch the heels for now and break them out at the after party!

Tip #2 Wear Make up


Even if you don't wear make-up, wear some, it looks good in the pictures. Karma Hill, of Good Karma Photography explains that, "wearing make-up evens out your skin tone and helps prevent you from looking washed out when using flash photography. It also helps enhance you faces' natural features and reduces shine immensely".
 
Tip #3 If You Can: Wear an Updo

Maui Beach Weddings Updo

Hawaii in general is known for its trade winds and if you haven't heard much about trade winds, it means the wind blows about 330 out of the 365 days per year. With this little tidbit of windy information, you should plan for wind and if it isn't windy, consider yourself the lucky one.

When planning for wind you really need to have an updo so your hair doesn't blow in your face. If you are constantly fighting with your hair, it annoys you, and can really dercrease the amount of quality photos you get from your photographer. So do yourself a favor, get an updo and you won't have to worry about pictures of you with your hair covering you face.

Tip # 4 Avoid Wedding Day Stress: Have Your Stylist/Make-Up Artist Come to You

Would you rather spend your wedding day driving all over town to have your hair and make-up done or have someone come to your hotel room? If you have the stylist come to your hotel you and your wedding party can just sit back, relax with a glass of wine and enjoy the view from your amazing Maui hotel room. Having your stylist/make-up artist come to you doesn't usually cost that much more than going to the salon either. If you have a decent sized group they sometimes even give you a better deal because everyone is all in one place, captive and ready to go.

Looking for a Maui Wedding Photographer or Maui Wedding Packages?