The newest Hawaii wedding photographers are getting ready to drop a bomb….

 

 

So let me preface this entire post with this…..Hawaii has always been our first love! As many of you may or may not know, same sex marriage hasn’t been legal anywhere in the United States until very recently. In 2008 Robin and I exchanged rings privately in Maui. While we weren’t legally married we always said we were married in our hearts. We also planned to get legally married when it was legal, in Hawaii. From the get go, we had planned to have our wedding on the island of Kauai.   Fast forward to 2012 when we decided to launch this legit wedding planning journey into full speed ahead, the budgeting brain set in (mostly Robin’s) and with that we thought it was too much of a financial stretch to fly us and our 4 kids to Kauai for the wedding.  Laguna Beach, being our second favorite vacation spot, had trumped Hawaii and become our first choice mostly because it was closer and more budget friendly (so we thought). Now, fast forward again a few months into 2013, Angela & Brad’s Kauai elopement, and us back on Kauai (our 2nd visit to that particular island) and we were just drawn back!

The time we spent with Angela & Brad changed our views for our wedding day.  It was just the two of them.  They woke up and drank coffee, read the newspaper, Angela painted her toenails, and we chatted about how un-stressful this day already was.  Angela & Brad’s Hawaii wedding made us rethink the crazy one we were planning in Laguna whose budget was soaring well over $30,000 (WTF?!).  Robin & I hopped in the car to grab some lunch and had a serious conversation….it was then that we decided to change our plans.  Laguna was costing us so much more money than we had originally budgeted (two times as much if you want to know) and it would actually be half the price to take our family to Kauai and do what we knew was right for us.  We cancelled our venue….told our kids….convinced our super rad Destination wedding photographer, Dan Dalstra, and our super cool destination wedding videography duo, JAKfoto, to make the trip with us (we really had to twist their arms) and are now booking our beach house for our intimate 20 person celebration.  And that is what feels right to us!  We flew our friend and fellow photog Jenna Clark from Creatrix Photography in from Oahu to capture us on Kauai during this recent trip over….enjoy the images below.  Hopefully this will give you a little piece into why we did what we did!

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, that is a cow, or a bull or some kind of creature just hanging in the grass behind us.

 

 

Love these candid moments Jenna captured of us on our favorite beach Moloa’a Bay.

 

If you have never been to Kauai, then I would like to say, you have never experienced the real Hawaii!  This island is so green, full of culture, non-touristy, and free of high rises & highways.  So forget about Maui, Oahu, Kona and visit Kauai-the most beautiful island!

 

This beach will be the site for our wedding….throw in some tiki torches, a live ukelele musician, 20 of our closest family and friends and a few lei’s and this will be our wedding!

 

 

This fruit stand has become our breakfast staple on our stays in Kauai so we thought it fitting to capture a day in the life of…..breakfast

We know this may be a shock to some of you but we had to do what was right for us and our family!  We love that some of you will be on this journey with us in Kauai and are grateful for amazing friends who would travel all the way to spend the week in paradise with us! We will continue this blog about our wedding and keep you posted on all the deets….

 

 

Until next time,

Renee & Robin

The R2 Studio – Now officially Hawaii wedding photographers