Looking back on my wedding day, it amazes me how perfect and special and wonderful it all was. The cliches are true, it really was the best day of my life! So far anyway, I suspect events such as the birth of children may surpass it - just. It really did seem like a magical day, so many things turned out so perfectly, beyond any of our expectations, and it seemed like most of the choices we'd made turned out to be so right. Even the day we picked was spectacular. If it had been a day earlier or later, the weather would have been awful!

I bounced out of bed on the big day at 5:30am, after only about 6 hours sleep, but I was so excited I didn't feel tired at all. I'd actually been having nightmares in the lead up to the wedding of things going wrong or not the way we'd planned (for example, I dreamed that the music they played for my walk down the aisle was Every Rose Has It's Thorn by Poison), but not that night. I was super excited and couldn't wait to finally wear my beautiful wedding dress and see how the venue looked all set up with my design ideas, and when I thought of seeing Nick looking all handsome and dapper in his suit at the end of the aisle, I felt all trembly and like I would burst with happiness.

I'd been really anxious about the weather for the wedding. As noted in my previous blog, it rained heavily on our first day in Hawaii when we arrived for our wedding week. It continued to rain intermittently throughout the week and it was extremely gusty. I was very anxious, as rain and wind would both have a good chance of ruining my dream of a beautifully sunny and fully outdoor wedding. At the rehearsal dinner (which was only 10 minutes away from our wedding venue) the night before the wedding, it poured with rain. As soon as I got up I checked the weather report on the internet. Miracle of miracles - 29 degrees celsius and sunny!

I ran out to the balcony to watch the sunrise, and it was just beautiful, the kind of lovely pink freshness that precedes a gorgeously sunny day. Here's a pic I took of the morning, as viewed from my balcony at the Turtle Bay Resort:

I was staying in a suite at the Turtle Bay Resort with my Maid of Honour, Seema. I figured that she probably wasn't as super excited as I was and let her sleep until 8:30. Then we had a light breakfast on the balcony (cereal with soy milk and fruit for me) and marvelled at how stunning the day was.

Now, it was at this stage that I realised something was potentially wrong. I had been in a bit of pain and discomfort and had been peeing blood the whole morning. Horror of horrors, I realised I had a bout of cystisis! Today of all days! I called the front desk to ask if there was a doctor or pharmacy near by, but the closest of either of those things was at a hospital an hour away. There was no way I could go there and still make it to the wedding! You can see a large glass of cranberry juice on the table in the above picture. I was drinking this and lots of water in the hope it would just go away.

We went to the Turtle Bay Spa at about 9:45am for our manicures, and it turned out there was a slight mix up with the booking. We were scheduled for 10:30am manicures, not 10am. So we went and sat by the pool in the sunshine, but I was in terrible pain by then and starting to panic. I couldn't go through my wedding day like this! The constant peeing while wearing a large white dress was going to be extremely difficult, and I couldn't duck out of the ceremony every 10 minutes to go to the bathroom. Not to mention the pain!

I texted my fiance Nick about the situation. His mother usually had medication for cystisis, and thankfully she had some with her that day. I also called our wedding planner Christina, who dropped everything to go to a doctor and get a prescription for antibiotics. Nick's mum was only 10 minutes away form Turtle Bay, so she drove her medication over which I took as soon as our manicures were over. Within an hour I was feeling better!

After the manicures and taking the medication, Seema and I picked up our dresses from the Turtle Bay wedding shop where they had been ironed. The lovely lady in the shop realised we'd just had our nails done and they were wet, so she very kindly offered to carry my wedding dress up to my room for me. Seema then put on some tunes from the late 80s and early 90s and Liz, my stylist from Maleana Cosmetics, arrived to do hair and make up. She was about half an hour late due to traffic, but after the whole cystisis crisis, I was feeling surprisingly relaxed. It just seemed like other things going wrong couldn't possibly be as bad as the cystisis situation, so it was as if the worst thing that could happen already had and everything else was just small stuff not worth sweating over.

Liz started with Seema's hair, then moved on to starting mine (while I ate a caesar salad balanced on my lap). She then did Seema's make up, and I have to say, she did an amazing job. Seema looked so beautiful!

It was then my turn to have my make up done, then my hair finished and my veil put in place. During that time, Christina arrived with the bouquets and my antibiotics for the cystisis. It was a 5 day course to take to ensure the infection was cleared up and that my honeymoon would be trouble free. I did feel a bit emotional when I saw the bouquets but was determined not to cry and ruin my make up! It feltl so surreal to think that was a bouquet for me for my wedding! Two of the photographers from Visionari arrived shortly after and began taking detail shots of my jewellery, dress and shoes, and the tail end of my hair being done.

I really think Liz did such a fantastic job on my hair and make up! Here I am after hair and make up is done, but before the veil was put on.

So now that hair and make up was finished, Liz took her leave. And it was at this point that another crisis reared it's ugly head. We had organised a coach to pick up most of the wedding guests from Waikiki and take them to the wedding venue on the North Shore which was about an hour away. Seema's fiance Rob called in a panic - 2 of the guests hadn't made it onto the bus! The bus was already on the freeway and well on the way to the venue.

I didn't panic, and was still feeling really relaxed after crisis one had been averted. I initially said to just keep going and get Nick to ring the missing guests and get them into a taxi which we would pay for. So Seema rang Nick (I wasn't allowed to talk to him until the ceremony!) to tell him, but unfortunately these guests didn't have a mobile phone and we weren't able to reach them at their hotel.

Seema pointed out that they had come all this way to attend our wedding and it would be such a shame if they missed it. So we got the bus to turn around and go back to their hotel to see if they could find them. Thankfully they were waiting outside the hotel!

This did mean we were now really behind schedule. Seema and I were supposed to leave the hotel at 4pm (after the getting ready photos were taken) to be at Loulu Palm by 4:15pm for a 4:30pm start. However it looked like the coach wasn't going to get there until around 4:30pm or later. I didn't want to risk leaving at the scheduled time and arriving at the same time as our guests - seeing me in my wedding dress before the big walk down the aisle was a big no-no! So we asked Seema's fiance to text us when the bus got to the venue and at that point we would leave. This would also give the guests some time to look at the venue, have some of the cool drinks we'd laid out for them, and chill a bit. We would have to start the wedding about half an hour late, but that didn't worry me at all.

So with another crisis out of the way, it was time to turn our attention to the dress! I had shot a video of the dressmaker who altered my dress doing it up so Seema could see how to do it. We watched that, and the video of the dress being bustled up. Seema had a look at the hidden buttons and loops on the dress so she could understand the bustling, then it was time to put it on. I was so excited!

It took about 20 minutes or so for poor Seema to get my dress done up. It was a laced up corset back, and I kept insisting it needed to be done tighter. I'd lost weight since my last wedding dress fitting so the corset needed to be tightened a lot! The photographers took some photos of the dress being done up, here is one of them:

Seema then put the earrings, necklace and bracelet I had borrowed from my mother on me, and then it was time for some posed photographs. This took quite a bit of time, and I felt a bit self conscious! It was a lot of: okay Charmayne, stand here, a bit more to the left, okay, a tiny step forward now, good, now look over your shoulder towards your left heel, turn your body slightly to the right, lower your eyes a tiny bit more - great now smile! I have to say, it got to a point where my jaw started trembling from smiling so much! Here are some of my favourite photos that they took:


I had 2 really great photographers with me from Visionari, and Nick also had 2 with him at his parents holiday rental photographing him getting ready. I should mention here that this was one of the choices we'd made that had turned out to be especially fortuitous. We had tossed up between Visionari and another photographer, and it was possibly the hardest decision we had to make as far as wedding vendors went. There wasn't much in it - we really liked both Jon from Visionari and the other photographer we'd met and all their work was amazing. In the end something in my gut told me to go for Visionari. There was something about their photos and Jon's quiet and easy going manor I just liked a little tiny bit more. So we signed a contract with them to have 2 photographers for the big day.

And this is when fate stepped in. A month or so before the wedding, Visionari were contacted by a Japanese publisher. This company had previously published a book in Japan about destination weddings which had been a bestseller, and they were putting together a second book. They had worked with Visionari on the previous book so they wanted to know if Visionari had any upcoming weddings that would be good to include in the second book. Based on the A-list vendors we had for our wedding, ours was chosen for the book! All that it meant for us was that we would have to answer some questions about our wedding and how we met etc, and that Visionari's photos of our wedding would be used in the book. But more importantly, what it also meant was, that instead of 2 photographers, Visionari were using 4 for our wedding at no extra cost!

Once the posed photos were done, there wasn't much else to do until we received the text saying the guests had arrived at the venue and we could head over there. One of the photographers went to the venue and the other stayed with us and took more photos. We sat around for a while, twiddling our thumbs a bit, until we got the text. Show time!

The walk from our room to the limo was pretty embarrassing for me, particularly walking through the hotel lobby. Loads of people gawked at me, which made me really uncomfortable! Getting into the limo in my dress was also a challenge, and actually sitting in the seats was really difficult. One of the photographers came with Seema and I in the limo and took pics. I was by this stage really really nervous! And then suddenly, we were at the venue...