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...

As I write this blog post, it is 5am in the beautiful Maldives and I am on the second day of my honeymoon. Having drastically changed time zones twice since leaving Hawaii, I'm a bit jet lagged! And yes, this does mean I did get married :). Being up so early gives you time to think, and to write blog posts! Reflecting back on my wedding celebration, it amazes me how fortunate Nick and I are to have such wonderful friends and family, how good the choices we made turned out to be, and how lucky we got with the weather!

As people were coming such a very long way for our wedding, most were taking at least a week off work to make a holiday of it. Nick and I therefore planned a week of activities and get togethers for all our guests. It was really a week long celebration, and all of it was fun and memorable, and everyone came away from the week with new friends.

We ourselves were arriving on the Sunday before our actual wedding, which was on Saturday 13 March 2010. We started our big wedding trip off by flying to Tokyo from London. We had originally planned to fly from London to LA then Honolulu, but having flown that journey several times during the planning stages of our wedding, we knew how long and uncomfortable it was. Add to that the fact that several months before the wedding, British Airways, who we had booked with, announced strikes to begin most likely in the beginning of March! We were able to cancel the flights without penalty, and when my Dad invited us to spend a couple of days with him in Tokyo before the wedding, we jumped at the chance. Nick had never been to Japan before and was eager to go. We spent one full day and one night in Tokyo with my parents and my cousin Tanya and her fiance, which everyone enjoyed thoroughly. Then we flew to Honolulu.

My first day in Honolulu was, quite frankly, terrible! Firstly, after arriving at Trump Waikiki, I found that the comb on my veil had broken in transit. I contacted our wedding planner Christina straight away and sent her a pic of the damage (see below) to find out if I would need the veil placed on a new comb, and if so, who could do it.

Then, it rained. Not your typical 5 minutes of Hawaiian rain followed by a cool breeze and sunshine, but proper, cats & dogs, constant downpour, London type rain. This went on for the whole day. I was beside myself, thinking our outdoor wedding would be ruined and that all our guests had come here for a Hawaiian holiday and were going to have such terrible weather!

Next disaster was that we were scheduled for a special Woo family dinner that evening in a nice restaurant and I didn't have anything to wear! I hadn't thought to pack any nice going out clothes, just shorts and summer tops - none of which fit me anymore anyway after losing 13kg since last summer for the wedding. Nick and I ran off to Ala Moana shopping centre (in the pouring rain) to get dress pants for him and a dress for me But we barely had any time before we were supposed to meet up with a couple of our wedding guests for drinks before the family dinner, and Nick spent long enough choosing his pants that there was no time left to buy a dress for me. I would have to wear shorts and a t-shirt to dinner that were too big!

I was close to tears. Everything was going so horribly wrong. I began to wonder if these were all signs from the universe cursing our wedding! But Nick, bless his little cotton socks, realised how down I was. When we walked past BCBG Max Azria, he spotted a nice white dress and insisted we go in and try it on. He was so great - he zipped me up in the change rooms, sat patiently while the sales assistant brought me several thousand dresses to consider, and gave constructive and helpful opinions that helped me choose a gorgeous dress. He also told me to send a text message to our friends to let them know we'd be 15 minutes late, and not to stress about it (turns out they were running late too so it was fine). Here is the dress we bought:
I ended up wearing it to the Rehearsal Dinner as well - I love it! The floral detail on the shoulder strap is gorgeous, very bridal.

And just like that, everything started to get better - retail therapy proves it's worth yet again! That, and an amazing and considerate fiance :). We met up with our friends, had a few drinks (one glass of champagne for me and no alcohol for Nick, who only drinks on very rare occasions). We had an amazing dinner with my family, and my Dad gave us an early wedding present and an incredibly touching card that reduced me to tears. Christina informed me the hair stylist said the veil was totally fine to use, and not to worry at all. The next day, we woke up to blue skies and sunshine, still the occasional rain shower and very strong gusty winds, but a huge improvement!

The rest of the week went by so fast - Monday we got up early and got our marriage licence, then hired a driver and mini-van to take us and some of our guests to the best beaches on Oahu (with a stop for lunch at the shrimp trucks naturally). Tuesday we met up with Nick's family (I met his sisters and aunts for the first time), had lunch with guests that had just arrived, and had welcome drinks in our apartment at Trump for all our guests to meet and mingle. Wednesday we went on a catamaran snorkelling trip with some of our guests and swam with turtles, then had the first ever Woo/Wright extended family dinner at Nobu, which was such a joyful occasion. Thursday Nick and I went for beauty treatments in the morning, met up with more guests who had just arrived for lunch, met with Christina for our final planning session, and took all our guests to the Paradise Cove luau as a welcome and thank you present. "Chief Nick" went up on stage to do a hula solo in a hot pink sarong and coconut bra - worth the price of admission alone!
Here's a link to the full (and hilarious) video on You Tube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDk4Ntwb2mM

Then suddenly, it was Friday - the day before our wedding! Nerves started to kick in, I felt quite tense and emotional. I had a facial in the morning, then packed up everything I would need for the wedding and the day after. I was paranoid I'd forget something as I'd be staying over an hour away from Waikiki at the Turtle Bay Resort. Nick, Seema (my maid of honour), Seema's finace Rob, and myself went to the Turtle Bay Resort where Seema and I checked in.

Then we had the rehearsal, where Nick's dad, who is the Bishop of Otaga and would be performing the ceremony, read through every line of the service during the run through. I just managed to hold it together and not cry. Then we had the rehearsal dinner, where I did cry. Then it was bed time, and oh my Lord, the morning of the wedding!!! Which I will relay in great detail in my next blog post :).

So here it is, the night before my wedding... I'M GETTING MARRIED TOMORROW!!!!!!!!

We've been planning this wedding for a year and three months and it honestly felt like it would never get here. Now suddenly I only have one more sleep to go!

We had the rehearsal this afternoon and I felt very emotional. The ceremony is being performed by Nick's dad who is the Bishop of Otaga in New Zealand. He took us through the entire ceremony, saying everything he was going to say and having us do all the motions. I nearly cried but just managed to hold it together.

Not so for the rehearsal dinner afterwards! Nick and I got up after the meal to thank our families and the bridal party, and when it was my turn I managed one sentence then burst into tears. Very embarrassing! I was just so overcome with emotion and couldn't contain it.

It was a lovely night though, and some really heartfelt and lovely things were said by Nick, his father, and my father. I bawled again when my Dad spoke. I am really worried about crying like a baby (and ruining my make-up!) during the ceremony tomorrow.

But I THINK that I am over the emotional, nervous/scared/tense bit now and am just really excited!!!

I am staying at the Turtle Bay Resort tonight with my maid of honour Seema. Nick is staying with his family at their holiday rental about 20 minutes away. I can't believe the next time I see him I'll be walking down the aisle to become his wife!

My dress is made of silk, which can be hard to get creases out of. I wanted to minimise the amount of wrinkling on the dress as much as possible in transit. We were flying for 11 hours to Tokyo, then from there another 6.5 hours to Hawaii, so it was going to be quite tricky to get the dress there without too much wrinkling. I didn't want to check the dress in either just in case it somehow got lost along the way. I could probably replace almost all of the other things I was bringing but not my perfectly tailored wedding dress!

The first thing I did was buy a wedding dress travel box from The Empty Box Company website. A friend of mine had travelled on a plane to get to her wedding destination and had used one of these boxes and said they were great. They are the exact maximum dimensions allowed by most airlines as hand luggage and fit nicely inside the overhead bins on planes.

I was a bit dubious that my dress would fit into the box, but I rolled it, still in it's garment bag, and it fit very nicely without any need for pushing or shoving to get all of the dress in. I highly recommend these boxes, they are awesome and make travelling with your dress so much easier!

Next I rang both the airlines I was flying with to see if I could hang my dress up in the coat closets on board. They asked loads of questions about the dimensions of the dress, the size and weight, and when they realised it wasn't a massive puffy wedding cake dress both airlines were totally fine with it.

I got the dress there in one piece (the veil however lost most of the middle teeth on the comb) and without too much wrinkling.

Here I am at the airport in Tokyo with my wedding dress box and another bag with the two large tupperware boxes of sugar flowers, plus the cake toppers made for us by a friend, and my big laptop backpack! I certainly wasn't travelling light.

My beautiful, handmade, one-of-a-kind Jimmy Choo Couture wedding shoes have ivory coloured satin covering the heels. This poses something of a problem for me walking down the aisle (or anywhere during our wedding and reception) as our wedding is completely outdoors on the grass! I really don't want green grass stains on my shoes from the heels sinking into the grass.

A friend of mine, Kylie, told me about these little plastic gadgets you put on the heels of your stilettos to stop them sinking into the grass. After a little bit of Google-ing, I came across several different products made especially for this purpose. I ordered a pair of the ones Kylie had used, Cleen Heels:

Our wedding rings were made for us by a jeweller in Hong Kong, who did it for half the price it would have cost us in London. Nick's ring was relatively easy to choose, he wanted a fairly wide court band in platinum. We went to Hatton Garden and H. Samuel's and Tiffany's and he tried on various wedding bands. We ended up choosing the Tiffany Lucida design but with a 5.5mm width.

When we had been shopping for engagement rings, one of the things that had really sold me on the ring I chose was the way it looked when worn with a diamond wedding band, so I knew that was what I wanted. However we found that diamond eternity bands that were the same width as my engagement ring made the large central diamond on the engagement ring all but disappear! So I opted for a wedding band that was reasonably thinner than my engagement ring to make sure the "show piece" diamond still took centre stage.

I had hoped for a wedding band that exactly matched the setting of my engagement ring, but as the jeweller was in Hong Kong and we were in London, we were trying to explain exactly what we wanted through emails and pictures. So it didn't turn out to be set in exactly the same way as my engagement ring. I'd looked around for eternity bands that had the exact same claw settings as my engagement ring and never found any, I think it must be quite an unusual design. It still looks okay with my engagement ring though, the differences aren't all that noticeable.

We also got our names engraved on the insides of our rings and it looks great! Here are our two rings together (the weird dark spot you can see on Nick's ring is my camera reflected in the metal!):

Once we had the wedding party, colour scheme, and my wedding dress all sorted, I turned my attention to the outfits for the rest of the bridal party. Originally, we had intended not to have a bridal party at all and keep it low key and relaxed. My mum nearly had kittens at the idea and insisted I had to have at least one bridesmaid (my Mum and Dad eloped when they got married, so they didn't have a "proper" wedding and I get the feeling she is trying to have one vicariously through me). So I relented and Nick and I decided to have one Maid of Honour and one Best Man. I asked one of my oldest and closest friends, Seema, to be my Maid of Honour and Nick asked one of his oldest friends, Jon. They both accepted - yay!