Dear Captain Howie and the gang,
Danny and I wanted to take a minute to tell you how much we appreciated everything you and your staff did to make our wedding day so special. Even before we got engaged, we knew we wanted a Hawaii destination wedding. When we got serious about picking a location, we came across your website. We were initially looking at getting married on a beach, but when we saw the Pukalani Falls Garden, we were almost immediately sold on it for our location. It had everything we were looking for: beautiful, exotic location, warm and private. From the initial contact by email and eventually by phone, we were put at ease knowing our wedding was in good hands. Chrissy was always very easy to work with and happy to answer any questions we had about our event. We had a few special requests like ordering leis for our parents and arranging to ship a few items ahead of our arrival. All of our requests were handled very quickly and without any issues.
We chose a sunrise wedding and couldn’t have asked for better weather for our day. I chose to have my hair and makeup done by your artist Ruthie and she did a wonderful job. She took my ideas and turned them into something even better than I had pictured. She definitely made me feel like a princess for the day!
Fernando was our photographer. He was just wonderful. Danny is not a fan of being photographed and Fernando helped to put him at ease. Because of this, he was able to capture some very intimate moments between Danny and I. He also had some great ideas for poses, not just the same ones that you see with a lot of other weddings. In addition, he took one of Danny’s ideas for displaying our rings and turned it into a unique shot. We also chose a digital photo album. I would recommend this to anyone. We had ours playing on a laptop on the guestbook table at our home reception. We had many compliments on it and a lot of our guests stood around watching as it continually turned through all the pages. Definitely a unique way to display all of the poses!
We also had you videotape our ceremony. I thought it would just be a basic run of the mill video of just the ceremony, but yet again we were just blown away when we sat down to watch it. We loved how so many great moments were captured between Danny and I. The sound and video quality were top notch and Chrissy did a wonderful job. I was especially touched that she was able to get a great moment with Danny and I talking to my grandmother back home on the speakerphone. I didn’t realize she was taping us at the time and it made for a nice surprise.
Last, but certainly not least, we have to give a special thank you to Captain Howie. His words meant so much to the two of us. He began our ceremony by referencing that it was Friday the 13th. I don’t think he knew, but we chose November 13 (a Friday) on purpose because our first date was on a Friday the 13th. It seemed like he just knew how special that particular date was to us. The whole ceremony was just very moving and we loved that we weren’t just having the normal “cookie cutter” ceremony.
In closing, if any brides are looking at Hawaii for their weddings, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Above Heaven’s Gate. Thanks to everyone, you helped us have the wedding of our dreams!
With much love and aloha,
Kim and Danny Dill
Lexington, Illinois
Married – November 13th 2009