My 2011 Maui Wedding Vendors Reviewed

[jennifersyble]

I got married in Maui in early August and wanted to do a quick review for all the other Maui brides out there.

 

First of all a couple of things I would have done differently now that I have hindsite: have your guests stay either all at the same hotel or at least in the same general area so that everyone gets a chance to hang together (half of our guests stayed in Wailea and the other half were in Lahaina and it felt like we were having to choose who/where to spend our time with on the days before the wedding.); secondly, I would have made printed out itineraries with maps for everyone that I could pass out in Maui (instead of that we emailed itineraries before we left and at least half of the people didn't print them out or bring them along); thirdly, if you're going to have a slide show on an outside projector, go ahead and pay the outrageous rental price so that you have the peace of mind of their setup (we brought our own screen and the wind blew it down and tore it in half within about 3 minutes of setup...so we made due with using a canopy curtain as our screen for the slideshow).

 

Now for the good stuff:

 

Coordinator: Cherise of The Perftect Wedding (www.theperfectweddingmaui.com). Cherise was an excellent coordinator for us. She was quick to respond to our many emails and phone calls during the year long planning process and her recommendations for vendors were great. On the day before the rehearsal she went over all of the important details with us and on the day of the wedding she took care of everything and everything look just how I imagined. All my husband and I had to worry about was getting dressed and walking down the aisle (which was awesome)! The wedding setup was beautiful and while we had a couple of last minute changes due to some crazy wind, everything was still amazing! Cherise gets an A+ for being an awesome coordinator and at a very reasonable price.

 

Catering: Food For the Soul was our caterer and the food was amazing! It was the best meal we had during our 8 night stay in Maui. Our guests had plated food with either mac crusted mahi mahi or filet and both were delicious. We had passed appetizers of brie & fruit which was also excellent. My one regret was that we should have ordered another appetizer (like the satay chicken) as some of our guests got a little too hungry while we were away taking sunset pics and I suppose the fruit and cheese wasn't quite enough to sustain them . One awesome thing about Food For The Soul is that their quote and pricing includes everything: tables, linens, glasses, chef fees, tax and even gratuity, setup and take down...so there are no surprises and their pricing is great!

 

Ceremony Musicians: Violin & Cellist; Cambria Moss & Silvinia. We loved having the live, classical musicians playing for the ceremony. I am so glad that during the middle of the ceremony we chose a song for them to play as a sort of pause in the ceremony; it gave us time to really take everything in and look around, reflect and enjoy that time. The wind was so crazy during the ceremony that it was difficult to hear the music at some points but I'm still glad we had it.

 

DJ: Wilmont. Wilmont was well priced and played our song selections for the most part so we were very happy with him as well. We're pretty picky about music so it was important for us to have a lot of say in what music was played. After all was said and done, we only had about 30 minutes of dancing (after dinner, toasts, etct) but everyone got up and danced the full 30 minutes and it was awesome!

 

Cake: Cravings Bakery. Our cake was beautiful, though different than we asked for or expected (fondant instead of buttercream, slight variation on our requested design, and the tiramisu flavor that we wanted was not what I expected...it definitely tasted more like vanilla or yellow cake than tiramisu). Honestly, I don't really remember exactly how it tasted because there was just too much going on (mentally and physically) to really think about it.. Overall it was a really pretty cake...just a little different than we asked for.

 

Photography: Anna Kim Photography. Anna Kim is a really nice, really sweet and super talented photographer. We haven't gotten our pictures back yet but I am confident that they will be awesome and I can't wait to see them. The day that we did our trash the dress shoot on the North side with her is one of my favorite days that we spent in Maui by far! We had so much fun taking the pictures and seeing another part of Maui.

 

Video: Marbelle. Our video should be ready for our viewing sometime next week so we haven't seen it yet but I can't wait.

 

Webcast: Stephan at Live Maui Webcasts. First let me say that I am so happy we opted to do this webcast (it was a last minute decision due to the amount of family that wasn't going to be able to make it to the wedding). The reason I am so happy that we did it is because now I have a video of our entire wedding ceremony from beginning to end that I can look back at and really take in everything (it goes by so fast on the actual wedding day that it's difficult to take everything in). In addition, our close family and friends that couldn't make it were able to see our ceremony live as it happened and that is amazing! I am so glad we have this keepsake memory to hold onto.

 

Bride Hair/Makeup:  Karine Cummings. Karine did a FANTASTIC job on my hair and airbrush makeup. She is literally the only hairdresser I ever had that has accomplished exactly what I wanted in a hair-do. My hair is really fine and can be difficult to style. On top of that, the wind was crazy during our ceremony and my hair held up perfectly. I also loved the light feel of the airbrush makeup. I highly recommend Karine to any Maui brides out there. She also did a great job on my mom and sister's makeup.

 

Bridesmaid Hair/Makeup: Regina did my Mom, Sister and bridesmaid's hair as well as one of my bridesmaid's makeup. She did a great job on all of them and I recommend her as well.

 

Rehearsal Dinner: Merriman's' Outdoor Ocean Deck. First of all, Merriman's is a spectacular setting and is more amazing than any of their pictures really show on their website. I absolutely loved everything about the location. At the end of the night we all sat around the fire pit at the end of the deck and had toasts and the setting was gorgeous (ocean surrounding us, moon shining down). This would be a fantastic location for a reception or a wedding for anyone looking. The only con in my mind is that their event coordinator, Danielle was pretty awful at getting back to us with details. It usually took her a minimum of a week to three weeks to return a call or an email and in the beginning she was literally the only person we could talk to about our event. Around the week before we left for the wedding another person began helping us and was better about returning calls and getting back to us.

 

Overall our time in Maui was magical! Good luck to all you future Maui brides out there!

[Larisa629]

Great review!!!  Thanks for sharing

[jeks]

Great review, I am excited that we have some similar vendors chosen!

[ccthurmeier]

Thank you for the insights! I bet it was a fantastic day.

[aleedoc17]

wonderful review!!

 

 

it's really helping me release some stress knowing how well things turned out when i'm 7,000 miles away! haha

 

 

I'm going to look up & contact the webcast guy Stephen you mentioned, because my grandmothers won't be able to make it & I really want to do it for them. They get along & I would have my uncle set it up at one of their houses & they would watch it there (as long as the time difference is ok, or maybe just have it recorded & then sent to them!)

 

 

Hair & makeup- is this someone on the island? if so, what is the company? do you have a website or contact number? i'm suppose to have a friend or two hairdressers who are suppose to be coming, however I need a back up & a review like yours, is great!

 

thank you for your time & review 

 

p.s. congrats on your wedding!