7.02.2012

Tikis in Paradise: Hello Maui!

We have safety arrived on Maui. We are so happy to be here and to be in paradise for 15 days. We are so excited to see how everything unfolds and what adventures await us while we are here. This island is simply heaven.

Yesterday was trying for sure. Have you tried traveling for a wedding before? I'm not talking about traveling to have a destination wedding. I'm talking about taking all of your wedding items with you while traveling to have a destination wedding. It's not easy.

First trying to get everything to fit in our bags was insane. No matter what I did or what I took out I just couldn't get them under 50 lbs. Thankfully, Hawaiian Airlines has a 50 lb weight limit instead of only 40 or we would have been screwed. In the end, I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best that the weight on our bags would be 50 lbs or under when we got to the airport. Because things just happen to get lighter all on their own while sitting in suitcases. Don't they? Ok, maybe not.

Were our bags under the 50 lb limit? No, they weren't. One weighed in at 50.5 lbs and the other at 52 lbs. Thankfully the woman at the counter let it slide and didn't charge us the additional fee. We were so grateful for that! I could have kissed her! Our bags will be much lighter on the return trip once we use up all of the wedding items and give out all of our gifts. Both Drew and I will be very happy about that.

Once we were all checked-in we headed over to Beaches for breakfast. It seemed like the perfect place to have breakfast on the way to the beach ourselves and it was nice to have time to relax a little before our hectic day of travel. We even had a view of our plane from our table. The staff was super sweet when they found out we were headed to Maui to get married. Many came over to congratulate us, they gave us silk leis and a bag of caramel corn for the road. It was a nice way to kick off our trip. 

View of our plane while having breakfast. And some messy hand prints. 

Posting my Last Post

Enjoying some breakfast before we get on the plane. 

Traveling with a wedding dress is no easy feat. It gets super heavy really fast. It doesn't fit in overhead compartments. It's long and bulky. My dress isn't even bulky. But, it became so while traveling with it.

We also had some carry-ons with all of the delicate wedding items, Drew's wedding outfit and the rest of my wedding attire and accessories. We didn't want to take any chances checking those items and decided to lug those through the airport, too. I can't even tell you how many times Drew knocked those bags over. Which only added to our stress not knowing if anything had broken or not. One item did break a bit, but luckily it was in a way that didn't matter. Thankfully!

Flying into Honolulu. Love seeing all of those Hawaiian Airlines planes. 

Flying out of Honolulu and on our way to Maui. 

Koko Crater 

After many hours of travel and a layover in Honolulu. We finally arrived on Maui. We were so happy and relieved once we got here. It's funny how exciting it is to always see that Welcome to Maui sign. It makes all that stressful travel worth it and some of the stress instantly slips away.

Awww, we finally arrived! 

As soon as we were through those doors we were lei'd with fresh orchid leis. Gotta love coming somewhere you can get lei'd so quickly. hehe All kidding aside, it's lots of fun to have someone greet you with a Hawaiian lei as soon as you get into town. You know you have really arrived in paradise as soon as you get one of those. 

I'm happy to say I didn't swell up like crazy when traveling, like I have been for the past couple years. No water retention at all! My feet still fit into my shoes and I still had ankles upon arrival. Finding out I have a reaction to eating nightshades hasn't been easy since I love all of them so much, but the benefits have been huge! I have to keep reminding myself of the benefits every time I want to eat a tomato or pepper or potato or....

Well, I'm ready to get our day going and wake up Drew. He's been lucky enough to sleep-in while my body though it was an awesome idea to wake up at 8:30am Portland time. So, 5:30am on the islands. Yeah, really awesome. Especially considering we went to bed at midnight Maui time. Yikes. I need to get some more sleep to be refreshed and beautiful on our wedding day. 

Tomorrow we will share with you the rest of our first day on Maui and so much more. We won't be on Facebook while we are gone, but if you'd like more up to date details of everything we are doing you can follow me on Twitter at kimmy_kupcakes or friend me on foursquare. Also, kimmy kupcakes, but this time without the underscore. Sorry, I only add people I actually know to both of those. 

What kind of things do you do to make travel easier for yourself? 


*All photographs are from our personal collection. 

2 comments:

NCan82 said...

what a great view flying out of Honolulu!! That's the only Hawaiian island I've been to (multiple times, even lived there on the army base with my mom and dad as a child for a couple of years!) I can't get enough of that island and only wish my FI didn't have an issue about "volcanos", then we could live there! I will just stick to visiting every 5 years or so lol! As for traveling, I wish I could pack light, but I always end up with an extra pair of shoes I don't wear or clothes that I forgot I brought. However, I only ever carry one carry-on bag and a purse...the rest are checked. Carry-on bag has contact solution and my glasses in case I need to remove or put on my contacts (thank goodness liquids are allowed on the plane again!) a puzzle book, a book to read, a magazine a sweater, makeup, jewelry...dang that's a lot of stuff! lol!!

kimmy kupcakes said...

HA! If FI has an issue with volcanoes then just don't take him to the big island. That's the only active volcano going. He should also not go to the NW. Lots of volcanoes here. I guess we just like to hang where the volcanoes are.

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