After we had our cake tasting, we headed into
Paia. First thing on our agenda was to mail out our welcome dinner invitations for the wedding. We stopped in at the post office, mailed them out and talked a bit with one of the locals who said we must go to
Paia Fish Market and get a fish burger before we left town. Since we already had lunch plans doing a tasting with our wedding venue, we weren't able to get lunch at Paia Fish Market, but we did stop by and check it out and added it to our list of places to eat when we are back for our wedding.
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| Just mailed out the Welcome Dinner invitations at the Paia Post Office. |
Our other goal (yes, yes, I'm very goal orientated) for going into Paia was to gather information for our wedding guests on the town. We wanted to make sure we knew what the town had to offer, the feel for it and what it had that would make our guests the most happy. For example, they had a really cute shop, Alice in Hulaland that I know Amanda will love and I can now direct her to go to that store.
We went through the town, checked-out different shops and read menus of the restaurants that they had. Paia had a great laid back vibe. It got busy as the day passed and more people were going through on the Road to Hana, but it still kept it's small town charm. It just made it more difficult to find parking. Luckily, we found a spot in one of the free lots pretty quickly.
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| There was a line outside of Paia Fish Market waiting for it to open! |
While looking at some of the restaurants in Paia we kept in mind what places would be good for other things those would be going on during the wedding week. For example, where would be a good place to get breakfast the morning of 4th of July since it happens to be Mykie's 15th birthday that day? We decided
Charley's would be the best place for that special breakfast after we looked at the menu and looked inside the place. Maybe we will get lucky and Willie Nelson will come in and sing Happy Birthday. We also looked at
Flatbread Pizza Company,
Milagros,
Ono Gelato Company, Hana Bay Picnic Company and a soon to open restaurant, Johnny B's Burgers. We wanted to check out more, but had to get back to our venue for lunch.
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| Perfect place for a large group for a birthday breakfast. |
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| Oh, for some reason we went and checked out the local tattoo shop. :) |
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| Love the sign! When we were there we talked to the owner who said they were opening next week. Looking forward to trying this place out when we go back in July. |
After checking everything out that we could in the amount of time that we had, we felt like we had a good feel for the town. We would be able to let our wedding guests now about what we thought they would like and what was there. We were also able to figure out where we'd want to go while we were there. We are really looking forward to going back to Paia and spending some time there for the wedding.
When we were done in Paia we went to our wedding venue to fully check it out and have lunch to sample the food. Now I should tell you all about that, but I am going to skip it for now. It's so special, I want to save it for later and fast forward to our visit to Baldwin Beach. I know, I'm such a tease! Wouldn't be the first time I've heard it....
I first told you about
Baldwin Beach in our post about our hukilau. Since we are inviting our guests here to spend the day with us on the 4th of July and wanted to get to know it to better to be able to provide our guests with any questions that they may have. It also gave us a great excuse to hit the beach in the middle of the day before we headed to dinner to try out a place for our rehearsal dinner.
We were glad to see the Baldwin Beach offered a lot of free parking. It also had lots of amenities to keep everyone comfortable throughout the day. There was a lagoon with lots, including children, swimming in. We swam in this area since it was Winter and currents can be stronger, too. I felt really safe and knew it was a good place to have our guests swim, both younger and not as young. Being in the water felt so amazing! Especially considering it was January.
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| I'm kind of in-love with the changes made to this sign to give it a whole new meaning. |
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| Covered picnic area with BBQs, restrooms and showers. |
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| So beautiful and a great place to swim. |
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| Since Drew grew up in Oregon he didn't learn the great skill of changing by your car using only your towel. I tried to teach him, but he didn't fully get it. Gotta keep the towel completely wrapped around you at all times, Drew. hehe |
All in all it was a great day! We got a ton done for the wedding, were able to get to know the area we will be staying in better,
we got to eat CAKE and we went swimming in the ocean in the middle of winter. If only every day could be so great!
Up next our Wedding Planning trip takes us to a great restaurant on Maui to test out for our rehearsal dinner. Won't you join us for dinner tomorrow?
Did you familiarize yourself with the area your wedding is being held to make sure to be able to provide your guests with answers to any questions that they may have? If you already knew the area well, what things did you think were most important to tell your guests about?
All photos are personal photos.
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