We’re honored to share some of the beautiful images and moments from Lisa and Luke’s Hawaiian elopement. They created a rich, meaningful ceremony full of unique traditions. What traditions will you be including in your wedding?
Read on for more ceremony details from the bride:
“From the moment we connected with our officiant, Kelvin, we knew he would create the completely unique and spiritual ceremony we were dreaming about. We gave him complete freedom to create the ceremony and incorporate Hawaiian traditions he thought would be meaningful to us.The only involvement we had in designing the ceremony was in writing our own vows and contributing a poem that we felt was representative of us and our approach to life. During e-mail correspondence (we never met in person or talked on the phone even before that day!) he asked about our love story and our vision for the day.
One thing we mentioned was our deep, mutual commitment to mindfulness and gratitude in our relationship and life. With that information, Kelvin decided to include a few traditions that he thought would “speak to our hearts.”
We started with a hand washing ritual. First we each washed our own hands to signify acceptance, recognition and forgiveness of our individual past, then we washed each other’s hands to represent the same kindness towards one another. We followed this with the traditional exchanging of leis as a symbol of our love for one another.
We were also led through a tradition called “ha.” “Ha” was a practice meant to bring awareness to our breath. We gave silent thanks to our respective paths for bringing us to this place, and developed a place of remembrance for this peak moment in our life together.
Perhaps the most exciting part of the ceremony was the coconut ritual. As told by our officiant, the coconut is essential to island life historically as it could satisfy every basic need. During this, Kelvin broke open the coconut with a rock and presented Luke with half. He held it out for me to drink from it and then I to him, symbolizing our dedication to providing for one another. I then poured the rest into the sand as an offering to the Earth and lastly he had Luke throw the shell into the sea.”
Photographer: Rachel Thurston |Dress: Michelle Mason | Necklace: Grandmother | Rings: Halloween (vintage collection) | Suit Jacket: Enzo Custom | Shirt: Ratio Clothing | Pants: Lands End | Maile Lei | Hair: Lauren at Boston Hair Design (beeshieedoeshair@gmail.com) | Haku: Elvirine Chow (heavenlyhakus@aol.com) | Bouquet: The Bride | Officiant
