Wow, I wish I had 50 more blogs pre-staged. The surf turned on and I went ahhh blog for this week. Ahhh editing family shoots before it’s too late to make Christmas cards. I’ve been shooting in the water heaps - I think I have two functioning brain cells currently. Enough about me.

Planning a 2020 wedding – look there’s a reason people have been getting married virtually. You want to do the thing but you don’t want to put your friends and family together for a Covid super-spreader event. Enter Erick and Rosie. They tried to plan for a bigger wedding and ended up making modifications. Planning within pandemic regulations, they set-up an elopement. What we thought would be a wedding in the water became a beach ceremony followed by a surf. 

Since two are better than one, I called my good friend Anna Riedel of Absolutely Loved to see if she wanted to team up to shoot their wedding. We went back and forth with planning and fortunately, it paid off. There were so many ways it could have unraveled. Even the day of, we had an impending cloud bank of doom that decided to ignore us.

They hired Pamakani to create the floral arrangements and she delivered. The flowers looked gorgeous and added that extra bit to the scene. Once we finished the ceremony, we shared cake on their rental car, and headed to town for a surf.

Erick and Rosie ordered his and her longboards, Rosie had a white bikini, Erick an aloha shirt, the sun was out, and waves were fun-size. Before the actual session Anna and I made the call to shoot couples shots while Rosie’s hair was still dry. It’s the little things. The session checked all the boxes I had in my head for the shot list and afforded time to get creative. Extra points to Rosie for keeping her Haku lei on the entire shoot–even in the water.  

A huge part of the success of the day was how relaxed Erick and Rosie were. Rosie was about as far from a bridezilla as one can be and there are no nicknames for grooms being donkeys so suffice it to say, Erick wasn’t a groomzilla. They were insanely happy to be able to get married, that much was evident. And, at the end of the day, that’s ultimately what matters most. That, and the ability to make lemonade out of what could otherwise be construed as a sour situation, or year… All about perspective. 

All you gotta do is, hold him, and kiss him, and Funk him…

Dear Reader, that catchy closing line is under construction as that may be the most inappropriate closer yet or it may endure the test of time, stay tuned, dun dun dun