Tikis in Paradise: Welcome Hukilau Part 'Ekolu

Ok, we were just joking around when we said that the party got really crazy after the parents left. We got all that craziness out in our 20s and early 30s. Well, unless you call getting crazy playing with sparklers. We aren't talking about the sucky sparklers they have on the west coast either. We are talking about the old-school metal sparklers that leave tracers. These sparklers were the real deal!

Since our Welcome Hukilau was on the 4th of July, we put together cute little sparkler packets for all our our guests. Yes, we really did think of everything. We used these great templates that I downloaded from Twig & Thistle. Used the straw tags, too. Didn't end up using the matchbox covers because Mama's Fish House had their own cute matches and it saved me a little time. We gave each of our guests a sparkler packet and everyone had a ton of fun with them.

Loved finding REAL sparklers to use for these. 

Tikis in Paradise: Welcome Hukilau Part 'Elua

After everyone was feed and happy, we decided to take them over to the beach to show them where we would be getting married on Saturday. Just as we were rounding everyone up, we saw a rainbow stretch across the sky. It was the first of many rainbows that we would see during our wedding week; a sign of good blessings on our marriage.

There's a reason they call it the rainbow state. 

Tikis in Paradise: Welcome Hukilau

After our day at Baldwin Beach, we invited everyone to join us for a Welcome Hukilau. This hukilau was packed full of all kinds of excitement from dinner, to giving out of town bags, to crazy fun with sparklers to celebrate the 4th of July to showing everyone the wedding ceremony location to celebrating a birthday. Yes, so much in one night!

Because of that, we'll be splitting this night up into two posts. There's just so many pictures to share! Of course, we won't be posting all of them. You will just have to make sure to come to our Portland celebration to see all of the pictures.

Nicki, Mykie and I left the beach early to pick up some trays of food from Da Kitchen and get everything set up. We though it'd make things a lot easier for everyone to have the main food catered and only have to add a couple smaller things ourselves. Plus, Da Kitchen has great local grinds and their catering is really affordable. We highly recommend them when you are on the islands.

We served kalua pork, chow fun noodles, a salad of organic spring mix, tropical fruits and papaya poppy seed dressing, taro and Hawaiian sweet bread rolls, tropical fruits and some of our favorite local snacks like Hurricane Popcorn. Everyone seemed to enjoy the food and was ready to big in and eat after a long day at the beach. We also set up a self-serve bar of local liquors like coconut vodka and tropical fruit juices.

Cutting up papaya for the salad.