Seeing All Sides: Hawaii

We are back from the best vacation ever and I'm so excited to blog about it! However, I think I'll have to write a few separate posts, as there are so many pictures and so much to blog about!

I'll start with Oahu. We were on the island of Oahu for two nights and three days. A lot of our Oahu time was taken by wedding activities and because of our flight fiasco, we missed out on the Pearl Harbor and Honolulu city tour, as well as the bachelorette/bachelor parties (bummer), but we still had some time to explore. (Missing the bachelorette party may have been to my benefit, as they were out until 4am Hawaii time - 9am our time! I'm not sure this girl could have handled that!)

But first, a few pre-Hawaii pictures!

In the Denver airport, BEFORE our flight was canceled, but rather just delayed. I clearly would have taken that option instead!

Since all of our toiletries were in our checked bag, this is what I had for our overnight stay in Denver. It was awesome...PSYCH!

Luckily we had a change of clothes! Here we are the following day on the plane to Hawaii!

My parents. We all got upgraded to Economy Plus, which meant more leg room. Very beneficial on a 7 hour flight!

Very happy passengers finally headed to Hawaii!

Day 1 on Oahu - We arrived around 3:30pm, a little later than scheduled, so I was already in a panic about making the rehearsal on time. After receiving our lei greeting, we rushed to find our luggage (we were a bit nervous that it actually arrived - it did!) and hopped on a bus to take us to our hotel. The hotel looked awesome, but I didn't have time to explore. I wouldn't even let the bell boys take my luggage...I wanted to do it myself since I needed to get ready so quickly!

The rehearsal was...well, a typical wedding rehearsal. Since we stayed at the hotel where the ceremony was located, it was convenient that I could just walk downstairs to the rehearsal after rushing to get ready. It was a gorgeous location on a deck that overlooked the Pacific in one direction and views of the city the other. After the rehearsal, we headed to the rehearsal dinner at a cool restaurant/bar right across from the ocean.

At the Honolulu airport!

My mom and dad

The view from the ceremony deck

Rehearsal dinner, very color coordinated to the wedding colors!

The shells were our drink tickets. As you can imagine, Craig was trying to coax the little kids into trading shells for other crap...money, umbrellas from drinks, etc. And it worked!

Cheers to finally being in Hawaii!

Bride and groom to be!

Yours truly!

High school besties!

Us again

First time in the Pacific ocean!

The hubs

Day 2 on Oahu - WEDDING DAY!!! (I'll save this for another post though.) Craig and I were able to have breakfast and do a little exploring before I had to report to get my hair done. We had breakfast at our hotel (this was included in our travel itinerary) and headed to the beach afterward for a quick walk. For me, the remainder of the day consisted of getting ready and hanging out with the Bride, while Craig chilled with my 'rents at the hotel pool until wedding time.

View of ocean from our hotel balcony

Hotel pool 15 floors below

This was the ceremony spot

Hula lesson on the beach during our breakfast

Yummy breakfast - I had some sort of omelet with crab and lobster sauce

That's Diamond Head in the distance

City of Honolulu

Trying to climb on the rocks for a pic, but the creepy-crawly crabs were freaking me out!

Craig chillin in our hotel lobby

Day 3 on Oahu - This was our last day on this island. We had a flight to Maui around 5:00 that evening. We spent much of our day wondering around the city of Honolulu, but also swam in the ocean for awhile first!