Everyone dreams of saying “I do” to the person of our dreams and living happily ever after. However, before we even get to the years of sincere work and compromise it’s important to start the entire path off on the right foot. How do we set the tone of living happily ever after?
Step number one in setting the right course for your marriage is choosing a kind partner who will be able to match many of your needs in daily life. Presumably you have already achieved this if you are reading this article and considering a wedding in Hawaii.
Step number two is to go about planning your Hawaiian wedding the way you’d like to see your life go after the wedding is over. Ask yourself these types of questions: What kind of life do you want? What things are most important to you?
If the answer to the question “What kind of life do you want?” involves the word ‘busy’ or ‘stressed’ then go ahead and create that kind of wedding planning, but who would want that? If the idea of a relaxed and easeful life attracts you, then I recommend creating a relaxed Hawaii wedding and a relaxed wedding planning process.
A relaxed Kauai wedding will of course be easier to have if you have less strict desires, but it’s certainly not necessary. You don’t have to take a mediocre or less than perfect wedding in Hawaii to avoid stress. You can have the wedding of your dreams and be relaxed too!
Start by making a short list of the most important things you want for your wedding. Some of those things might include being with loved ones, being surrounded by beautiful flowers and beautiful scenery, having a gorgeous dress that you look sexy in, getting great photos at a good price etc. Once you have an idea of what things are important to you then prioritize them (in a general way). If it’s more important for you to have great photography than an expensive archway, then you know where to allot your hard earned dollars and your time.
Knowing where to put your time and money will help relieve a lot of stress in the whole wedding planning process. Much of the stress that is created is because people want to have the best of everything at their wedding, yet they feel stress from paying for it. If you can simplify your desires that’s the easiest. If not, that’s ok. Then what you need to do is prioritize your desires. If wedding photography in Hawaii is more important to you than flowers, then spend most of the money on that and don’t put as much focus or money into flowers. Put the bulk of the money on the top 5 or 6 important things to you rather than the top 15. Look at your list of desires. If flowers are at the bottom but being married in a nice hotel is at the top, then get some nice simple flowers and put the money towards the site fee.
Another really important thing, maybe the most important thing, is to plan out everything as well as you can, and then let go just enough that you can have a good sense of humor about things if they don’t turn out the way you planned them! Your Hawaiian wedding will be perfect and it may not be exactly the way you planned. Maybe you plan for a certain song to be played at a certain moment. Great. Plan it out. Ask the musician to learn the song and tell them exactly how and when to play it. Then, if something happens and it doesn’t happen the way you planned, don’t look at it as not perfect; just find the humor in what did happen. Often times the bride is so stressed trying to micromanage the entire event and make sure it goes exactly as she wants that she forgets to let the universe have a say in it all and to just let the wedding happen. I’m not saying mistakes are desirable; I’m just saying that sometimes things don’t always happen the way we planed, and its still ok. Try – of course you should have your wedding day the way you want it (more or less). Just be willing to let go enough that you still have fun, and you still see the humor in funny events and most importantly that you still are relaxed enough to start your marriage out on the right foot!
Remember our motto at Aloha Ever After: You can have the perfect wedding of your dreams and be relaxed in planning it!