THE wedding

this was probably the busiest i've ever been...preparing for a wedding. note to self...marry someone rich so i can hire people to do everything! but it all paid off because in the end everything came together beautifully!!! and after seeing my two besties at the happiest they've ever been...i'd do it all over again.

so since march was wedding month, i had spent the first two weekends flying to cali to help out with as much as i could. and then i flew out the weekend before the wedding and stayed until the big day. i brought my sister along with me the week of the wedding cause i knew there would be a lot to do. and boy was a right. as soon as we got there we went straight to work. here's a play by play of our schedule for that week:

friday:
- arrive in orange county and head out to coto de caza (where the real housewives of orange county live) to pick up the brides head piece and a few silver platters for the hors d'oeuvres
- head out to murrieta thinking we would get some shut eye. WRONG. programs had to be glued to cardstock, on both sides...so instead of waiting til the next day we started it up at midnight and finished by 4am.

saturday:
- BALL day! cutting out 1800 paper circles...then folding and gluing them together to make a total of 90 balls! this took us literally ALL day...from 10am-7am the next day

sunday:
- day of rest...oh wait...that is after ironing approximately 100 chair ties.

monday:
- ironing 30+ huge table cloths
- ironing 100 seat covers and figuring out how to store them

tuesday:
- salon day!!! getting our nails did with the bride
- continue ironing 200+ more seat covers

wednesday:
- visiting the venue to map out the ceremony
- chopping up veggies, baking cakes and making pudding for desserts, and skewering grapes for pupu's

thursday:
- rehearsal day! headed up to long beach early to get a few last minute items for the wedding
- arriving at the chapel on time...only to wait an hour since everyone else (who lived the closest) came late. hahaha.

friday:
- crunch time...chopping up the rest of the fruit for the hors d'oeuvres.
- practicing the taualuga with the bride
- loading up the cars with everything that needed to be transported to the venue the next morning

saturday:
- waking the bride up at 6am to start getting ready
- waking up the rest of the bridesmaids to get ready as well before heading over to the venue to help set up
- returning to the house to send the bride and groom off for the bridals while the rest of us get ready...
- head to the venue and then....GAME TIME!!!!

everything about that day was BEAUTIFUL!!! and i know i've said this before but i'm over the moon happy for these two...because of everything that they have both gone through to finally come together. and i'm just so happy to have met both of them and be part of that special day. here's some pix from that crazy week!

the besties

in a previous post i know i mentioned that two of my very best friends were getting hitched...to each other. this was definitely a first for me...the whole being close to both the bride and the groom. so naturally i was chosen to be the maid of honor. hahaha...nah..jk. well...the time has come for these two to get married. but before i get to that i have to share the story of how i've come to know these two beautiful people...and how it alllllll happened.

first meet the bride...ms ana eileen aiono
she and i met in the spring of 2006. she and her niece, morgan, just moved out to hawaii from arizona and started working with me at turtle bay. because they were new to the island, i took pity on them since they had no friends and introduced them to my friends. hahahaha...totally kidding bout the taking pity part...but i did befriend them and introduce them to the YSA scene in laie. they came at the right time too because me and my roommates were in the process of house hunting for a bigger place, and since ana and momo were so over paying for their overpriced apartment, we invited them to move in with us. and that began our bond as musicbox sistahs for life!



then there's the groom....gregory robert dowden
we first officially met the summer of 2007 at a ysa ward activity. i had always heard so much about him from my other friends who went to school with him at byuh his freshmen year. he left for a mission, went to school in utah for a couple years and returned to byuh to finish up. i would always hear stories about them and this white boy greg. so when i first met him...he was like..."hi..i'm greg." and instantly i knew...he was the white boy. it wasn't until later that year...after winter ball i think, where we became close. next thing i know is i was picking him up from the airport after his winter break and we hung out pretty much everyday after that.


 they both met each other in the ward the same year i met greg. ana's sister in law is from the same area greg's from and she actually worked at his high school. so when he first came back to hawai'i that's how he introduced himself to ana. but i don't think they started hanging out til later in 2008 when ana came back to visit and i was hanging out with greg...so naturally she started hanging with him as well. then when he went back to cali that year, they met up there and started hanging out there, and developed a lasting friendship. they've seen each other make it and break it with past relationship, yet always seemed to miss each other when it came to developing that "more than friends" relationship. but now finally after 4 years...they have turned a new page in each others lives, and are not stuck with each other..FOOORRRREEEEVVVEEERRRR!!! lol