AN UPDATE, AND WEDDINGS

my friend Kat made me a personalized b-day cake!

JUST SOME THOUGHTS OFF OF MY HEAD
more on my birthday, Easter, and some weddings

HAPPY BELATED EASTER! Hope your egg hunting, Peter Cotton-Tail, Jesus Ressurection Day went well! I had a pretty cool Easter. I went to church in the morning, did a little Bible studying there, then headed to the Polo field to watch some pretty rich people try to hit a ball while going 40mph on a horse. I have to say, there were some exciting plays on the polo field. And I also have to say from my purely speculative observation, horses do poop a lot.

LETS START WITH SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS...
I'm kinda feeling off the cuff tonight, so I'm just going to let the fingers do all the typing here.

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THAT CAKE, PICTURE ABOVE...
That picture above. That's a cake my really good friend, Kat, made for me. For those of you who don't know, I'm a huge Eagles fan. Huge.... So big, I basically miss church every Sunday so I can watch them play! Kat on the other hand, is not a football fan at all. In fact, she knows nothing about football. But she did her research and made me a little football cake, equipped with an Eagles helmet candle to blow out, and an Eagle's truck, which really looks like my real truck. Funny thing, is that she managed to make a full sized football field, with the yellow goal post, but her mom unknowingly ate half of the cake, and the goal post! D'OH!

So, what you see, is what's left....oh well... But hey, this is still probably the coolest thing anyone has done for my birthday! Thanks Kat!

NAVY SEALS SAVE THE DAY AGAIN!

GOOD NEWS, THE SOMALI PIRATES ARE DEAD, AND CAPTAIN RICHARD PHILLIPS WAS FREE'D ON EASTER! What a great Easter day story. Obama stepped up to the plate, allowed our military to do their job, and the Navy Seals shot and killed the men holding Captain Richard Phillips hostage. Obama deserves some credit, and so does our entire Military operation. The pirates have vowed to avenge the death of their "friends..." so it may get interesting from here. Lets all pray Obama does the right thing and kills all of the pirates out there.

Did I tell you that one of my clients is a Navy Seal. Really cool guy, very emotional guy. I wonder if had anything to do with this? But I remember going to the reception and being in the room filled with Navy Seals. That was a pretty awesome feeling. I have to say, they are a pretty loud group of fellas.

Okay, not onto some weddings.....

TINA AND KEN
...night club magic...

Tina and Ken got married on August 8, 2008. I'm not sure if I put up their wedding pictures...but here are Tina's favorites! Tina and Ken met in a night club of all places. Who said meeting in a night club can never lead to life long romance? Well, actually, a lot of people! But hey, they defied the odds, and they are happily married.

I remember the WED DAY at Ko'olina on August 8th. I had six or seven weddings at Ko'olina, and one on the North Shore. At the end of that day, I was so pooped, I just wanted to go sleep. But instead, I flopped into my car, and drove to the park to pay football with my friends! Hahah.

Tina said this was one of her favorite shots!

Doing back to back weddings is rather strange. It's just go-go-go, and there is no room to screw up anything. It's not like I screw up anything during weddings. But there cannot be any delays of whatsoever. Brides have to be on time..etc..etc... I usually don't do more than one wedding a day. At most, two. One in the morning, one at sunset. You know, shooting weddings, planning them, really doesn't feel like a regular job until you're stuck at the beach doing seven weddings. This year, the big day is 9-9-09 and I am getting booked up for that one as well. I guess next year it will be 10-10-10. Guess what though...I did marry someone on 6-6-06!!!

So lets move onto the next wedding... I mean, vow renewal.

Lupita and Alberto, their 11th year anniversary!

A VOW RENEWAL
Making it eleven!!

I always love doing vow renewals. It's nice to do weddings, but to hear the stories of ever lasting love is great. I remember talking to a couple who renewed their vows after 50 plus years. I asked the husband, what's the secret to being together for so long. He told me, "After day three of meeting her, I went deaf!" Hey, who is he kidding. Relationships are extremely hard, and marriage is extremely tough. Being together takes more than just love, but common goals, interest, and morals.

Lupita and Alberto decided after eleven years, to renew their vows. Lupita always bugged Alberto to renew their vows after ten, but things did get in the way. So when they planned their trip to Oahu, Lupita told Alberto they were getting their vows renewed right away!

The family....

Now, for most vow renewals, there is usually some element of surprise. But Elias and I never imagined who we'd be surprising this time around. The secret whom we kept the vow renewal ceremony from was none other, than their daughter Paola. See, Paola, had been snooping around the house, and had stumbled onto her parents wedding album. I guess she had wish she could have been there. Well, she got her wish.

Yup, Paola was surprised....great family shot

We kept the secret from Paola by playing along with her parents story. According to her parents, they were all just going to the beach for a photo shoot. Well, I met them at their car at the beach, we walked over to the beach to take a few pictures, but Elias was standing there with his bible. Elias broke the news to Paola, and she couldn't believe her ears. She was all smiles.

See, this is why I love vow renewals. You really can't do surprise weddings right? Well, I guess you can...but geez..that would be wrong. But surprise vow renewals, they are pretty sweet.

What really made Lupida and Alberto's vow renewal special is that they got their vow's renewed on my brithday, March 27th! I didn't tell them though. I didn't want to steal their thunder.

putting a blessing on the entire family....

I still have three weddings which I have to blog about, but I don't think I'll get to them till the end of this week. They were wedding with video, so right now, I'm working on editing them altogether. I'm not sure if I'm going to post all of their wedding videos online. I'm still debating. I actually have to figure out how to embed those video files....

On bigger news, I will be turning my patriot package into a digital package. I'm making the halfway leap to digital. I'll be picking up my new digital camera, a 14.7 mega pixel camera, this week. It's small, not really a SLR, but it has all the manual override features, a hot shoe for an external flash and sync...basically everything a film junkie like me could want. I think there will still be learning curve with that thing....but for the most part, it'll be okay.

The big question, is digital better than film? To me, no. The most colors a digital camera can get is 256 colors...with film, it can see more colors than the naked eye. Because digital cameras onlyi get 256 colors, a lot of times, the lattitude just isn't there. While digital may be sharper than film, it doesn't have the saturation, or the the color of film.

Well peeps, I'm outta here.

Steven Young
The Hawaii Wedding Reporter
http://www.dreamweddingshawaii.com/