This was a first-class affair all the way. We will link to Kalika's wedding website, which I'm sure will be amazing, when it's done. In the meantime, you can check out her business website Citrus Studio. She is also designing our Keiki Place website.
The rehearsal dinner was at Roy's in Hawaii Kai. The food was scrumptious, and we thought there was no way that the reception dinner could top it. We were wrong. Mae-Ling and Felita enjoyed the handsome male waiters as well. We embarrassed poor Naomi by having all the young waiters guess her age. Most were off by over 5 years. She's only 16!
The outdoor wedding was held at the James Campbell Estate, next to the Ihilani Hotel where we had gotten married. As the pictures show, the setup was incomparable. For the short and sweet ceremony: rose petal carpet, beautiful parasols for the guests, fans on each chair, an amazing program, groomsmen with the traditional Hawaiian wedding lei for men, bridesmaids in the same dress design but different pastel colors, and of course Kalika aglow in her Vera Wang dress. Then we watched hula girls dancing by the Pacific Ocean, sipping our Mai Tai's and Pina Colada's. When dinner started, the hula girls gave each guest a wonderful purple lei.
What's better than dinner at Roy's? Dinner catered by Roy's by the beach under a full moon of course! The different food stations manned by chefs from Roy's offered mini-plates of delights, from crab cakes to filets of steak to our favorite, the butterfish (believe it or not, I believe this has now topped The House's famous Chilean Seabass). During dinner, Kalika's father sang Sinatra, a local celebrity MC'd, Kalika and her bridal party hula'd, the audience participated in a That's Amore song, and oh yeah, Lion Dancers came.
What else do you want? How about dessert stations that made you forget you were already stuffed? Tables with significant Hawaiian names painted on watercolor cards? Lush Hawaiian flower theme? Handwritten calligraphy everywhere? Table cards creatively propped in a large bowl of sand? A 3 layer wedding caked with a votive backdrop? Touching speech by Rodney's best friend? Sunset pictures on the beach? Wind chimes with their wedding logo as favors? Complete open bar? And to top it off, fun dancing music to swing, groove, trance, and hip hop under the tent?
We don't know. We can't think of anything else. To Kalika and Rodney, all the best. Thank you so much for sharing with us your year and half of planning. As you can tell, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. What a great way to cap our vacation.
