ELOPING IN MAUI

Some people I'm sure can't even wrap their head around the idea of eloping. I was one of them. I thought it was for people that didn't have families or friends.For older couples that we're getting remarried and didn't want to plan a big wedding for the second or third time. I thought I wanted a big dress, flowers, a church,presents, lots of family and friends, a huge gourmet meal, cake, dancing. But look at those things. I mean really LOOK. It's materialistic. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't think it's a bad thing, I think memories are created around materialistic items, however; After 10 years together, 2 cancelled wedding like the one above; I knew it wasn't for us.

We had planned to honeymoon in Maui, so why not get married there, too?

After getting back from our New Years trip to New York, I got right to work. My first process is always finding airfare but because we knew we absolutely wanted a condo I started there first. With only a few weeks to plan and doing so right in the middle of their peak whale watching season it was nothing more then a challenge.

I probably sent 75 emails to condo owners through Vrbo.com with maybe 10 replies. Most of which responding to being unavailable. After no luck on that website I started researching hotel resorts. In the end it wasn't an option. We wanted a kitchen so we could have breakfast and make sandwiches for our beach time. We also wanted a washer and dryer so we could pack less and just wear and rewash. I then started searching on Craigslist. I choose some major cities like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Maui, & Los Angeles. Sometimes people book vacations, then something comes up so they try and sell their vacation on CL. I ended up finding an angel time share owner who had 7 days in Maui available for the exact dates we were looking for. The only problem is; we wanted 8 nights, not 7. After a little work, she was able to use her credit card points for this particular resort and get us the 8th night in the same room. It was a huge relief to have that part of the trip done.

Moving onto airfare. What a joke that was. One day I saw a ticket for $450 round trip. I waited to book the ticket because we were still negotiating our condo, and then later kicked myself in the ass. The next week prices ranged from $800 to $1200 round trip per person. I held out for 2 weeks and finally booked our ticket for $600. I'm still kicking myself just looking at this.

I'm still working on our rental car because, things can't be easy, right?


All of our wedding items have been booked, and yes I'm going to share with you what we're doing and how we're doing it. I wanted to categorize each post into different topics because I feel with such a small wedding the things we've planned are each very essential in what we did.


This time around I never logged into the knot I went with my gut instinct and planned exactly what WE wanted instead of what was popular. I'm not a DIY bride, I didn't interview multiple vendors, and I wont be testing a cake. It will be me, The boy I fell in love with 10 years ago, a beautiful beach, and a Hawaiian pastor.

I couldn't be more happy.