Janet's Recommendations--Wedding in Hawaii! BTW, I'll be starting a new BRIDAL LINE, so stay tuned! Merv and I got married on Oahu, July 8, 2000, and below are the wedding specialists that we hired, stores where we shopped, and places where we ate! Remember: if you're planning on getting married in Hawaii, be prepared to book all your venders well in advance if you want your first choice(!), especially the wedding location! I booked our ceremony/reception location (Kahala Mandarin Oriental) about a year in advance. Again, I am just a happy customer; these companies are not associated with janetjewelry, so please contact them directly if you're interested, and use them at your own risk! Kahala Mandarin Oriental--ceremony & reception Merv and I both wanted to get married on the beach, in Hawaii, but not in Waikiki, which left us with 2 options, but one is kind of in bad shape, so it was a no-brainer to select the Kahala Mandarin Oriental! It's about 5 minutes from my parent's house, and they just renovated the entire hotel a few years before (it used to be the Kahala Hilton), and it's absolutely gorgeous! It's elegant without being stuffy, and really is a beautiful mix of old and new Hawaii. It's away from all the touristy hub-bub of Waikiki, and I didn't even bother looking anywhere else. This place was perfect! We had so many guests who flew in from NYC and even Japan, that we wanted to focus our budget on food, believe it or not, and let me tell you....it was worth every penny! We had a full buffet, with sashimi, kalbi ribs, and the works! The events coordinator who helped me plan the wedding at the Kahala Mandarin, Eileen, was really good (no-nonsense and to the point--my kind of style!), too. www.mandarinoriental.com Erisa Katsura--my wedding dress I actually only went to one store to look at and buy "the perfect dress" for my wedding! I couldn't be bothered to go to a ton of places, so I looked through a stack of magazines, and I knew exactly which dress I wanted, so that's the only place I went! I wanted a dress that was very architectural, timeless, no lace, no beads, no froufrou trimmings, no train, no girly details, very minimalist, with ultra clean lines. My dress was exactly what I wanted, which was great, but I have to say, I was really irritated when the saleswoman specifically told me that she's charging me an additional $100 because my butt was too big! I mean, if she slipped it in, I wouldn't have even noticed because I could have bought a small child with that amount, but she hurt my feelings for a measly $100 bucks for "my special dress!" Plus, these designer dresses are made to order, and even if my bust was a size 2 and my butt was a size 6 (wow, where did that come from....I've never been size 6), hello--I sew, too, and it's not brain surgery to merge the two patterns, and hello--there's this thing called "a fitting?" Whatever. I got my dream dress, she also did Demi Moore's dress, so here's the info: www.erisakatsura.com Isaac Mizrahi Slides for Janet To be honest, I can nominate myself for "least amount of time a bride spent looking for the perfect shoes!" The day of my first fitting (when they need you to have "your shoes" to hem the dress properly), I ran down to Saks Fifth Avenue, and voila! What luck, I found the cutest Slides that perfectly matched my dress! www.saksfifthavenue.com Nicole Miller--my bridesmaids' dresses Nicole Miller is about 2 blocks from the Yumi/Erisa Katsura boutique, in the '70s on Madison Ave, and to be honest once again, this is the only place I looked at bridesmaids' dresses! My sister was in town just for a few days, we didn't have much time, we happened to find a dress that was really nice (a nice bridesmaid's dress? We'll take it!), and I think the style came in 4 colors, and I only liked one, so that (periwinkle) became my "wedding color" by default. Periwinkle's a good color on all skin tones, too, so that worked to my advantage--my sister & Gretchen are really fair, Janne has more of an olive complexion, and Ana likes to be tan, and they all looked fabulous in periwinkle! www.nicolemiller.com Ted Baker Suit for Merv Merv's first suit EVER! I didn't want Merv to wear a tux (I've seen him wear one, and he looks like a waiter), but the problem is, we both didn't know anything about suits! We asked a fashion designer friend of ours to help Merv out, and she took us around Soho, from Agnis B for Men, Helmut Lang, to Ted Baker, where Merv found a suit that not only fit his body type best, but the suit Merv liked had a slight stretch to the fabric, which really slimmed him down, and it was really reasonably priced, too! Merv's a huge fan of their dress shirts now, too! www.tedbaker.com Jeffrey for Merv's Dress Shirt and Matching Tie While looking at suits in SoHo with our friend, we saw this shirt I loved on Merv, a hot pink dress shirt at Agnis B, but they didn't have it in his size! After that experience, I was determined to have Merv wear pink at our wedding, so I sent him on a wild goose chase for months, looking for the "perfect" pink dress shirt! I tried to chaperone, but I just didn't have the time, so I told him to go shopping by himself and look for the most fabulous salesboy at the store, and ask him to dress him. Sure enough, Merv ends up at Jeffrey (have you seen the SNL skits based on these boys?), and they had a field day dressing him up, and he came home with "the perfect pink shirt & perfectly matching tie." Hiphip hooray for ultra-stylish, gay men! In the Meatpacking District a few blocks from janetjewelry(!): 449 W. 14th St. New York City Prada Shoes for Merv Merv has a huge collection of skateboarding shoes, but hardly any dress shoes! This was going to be his first "serious formal shoes," so I made him invest in Prada. They have beautiful shoes, and all my fabulous boyfriends swear by them! Merv's still afriad to wear them out, but at least I got him to look nice for our wedding! www.prada.com DVVS I didn't want to design our wedding bands--I always look at things I've made in the past and think about what I could have done differently, so when it came time to look for rings, I knew I wanted DVVS' signature "Morse Code Rings," which are platinum bands with your spouse-to-be's initials set in diamonds (like mine) or etched in (like Merv's). And as luck would have it, our ring designers happened to be vacationing where we got married on the exact date! That's destiny for you! www.dvvs.com Eugene Kam Photography Merv is one of the Art Directors for a major magazine, and the Creative Director for C4 Studio, which means he selects photographers and directs photo shoots for a living. Needless to say, he's extremely picky about photography, and once he met with Eugene and saw his portolio, they started talking shop (I have no clue what they were talking about), and we booked him right away! He's amazing--he managed to get all the "wedding shots" we needed, and yet totally not noticeably in the way of our wedding! Now we have timeless, beautiful photos to look at to remind us of our blissful day (*sniff!*)! www.eugenekamphoto.com Designs by Hemmingway Debbie is the best! I met with several florists before Debbie, and once I saw her portfolio and talked to her about what I wanted (my dress was very architectural, so I wanted the flowers to look more natural and softer, i.e. not the ulstra-structured "Martha Stewart" type of arrangements), and she did am amazing job with my budget! Flowers are one of those things you just have to wait until the day of, and she more than amazed me! She also did John Travolta & Kelly Preston's wedding! www.designsbyhemingway.com Cakes By Lil Of course my sister makes the most beautiful cakes in the world! She just had a baby and decided to be a full time mom, so you can't get her designer cakes anymore, but you can drool over her cakes online! www.cakesbylil.com The Bead Gallery Honolulu--bridesmaids' jewelry Jamie, the owner of The Bead Gallery Honolulu, made all my bridesmaids' jewelry as a wedding gift! It was absolutely amazing, and all the colors matched beautifully! I had enough things to worry about, so I was so glad she took care of the bridesmaids! www.thebeadgallery.com Paul Brown Salon--Hair & Makeup The Vice President of Paul Brown Hawaii, Catherine Acena, has been cutting my hair since junior high school, and she knows me better then my therapist! Matt colored my hair the week before my wedding (he's a technical genius with color, and a hottie to boot!), also at the Paul Brown Salon. Gerri Brown, the Director of Makeup, did my makeup for the wedding, and she's the only person who's ever done my make up without making me look like DragonLady! Cathy, Gerry, and their style team came to our hotel, did their magic, and we still had time to spare! www.paulbrownhawaii.com Reverend Frank Mak Reverend Mak married my brother and his wife, and he was so easy-going and nice, we asked him to marry us, too! At first, we wanted to have a non-religious wedding (we're both agnostic), but at the last minute, Merv asked me if I'd mind having a Christian wedding. Apparently, it was already a big deal that Merv was the first in his family "not to be married in a church," so he thought in the long run, it just might be the most prudent choice to have a Christian wedding. It didn't really matter to me, and Reverend Mak was really flexible and accommodating to our needs. It was a short(!), casual ceremony on the grass right next to the beach. Exactly what we wanted! And of course, Merv couldn't be like everyone else and say, "I do," so he says, "Absolutely," to which I was thinking, "Absolutely what?" I will write in his contact number later, because I don't remember it off the top of my head.... Big Island Cookies--our favors Ever go to weddings where they obviously spent a lot on favors, and you just think, "Why?" We wanted to get something that would be a delectable "immediate gratification" kind of favor that most of our guests could enjoy! We LOVE these cookies, and had them flown in a few days before our wedding, and they were so good, we didn't want to give them up! We ordered 3 different kinds of shortbread cookies dipped in chocolate and caramel, individually wrapped and sent in bulk, and then put each kind into little boxes for our guests. www.bigislandcookies.com Artistic Ribbon--wrapping our favors Once we had our cookies in the little boxes, I got periwinkle ribbon at Artistic Ribbon. The boxes were white, and I got wide organza ribbon with satin edges (with wire edges, to make the bows shapely), so the ribbon looked really nice with the white background. I get a lot of my ribbon from this company--they sell things in 50 and 100ft spools, and they have a huge selection. You can ask them for a free catalog. www.artisticribbon.com Honolulu Craft Supply--for decorating our favors Once the ribbons were tied onto the boxes (my grandmother tied all 190 boxes!), they still looked like they were missing that final touch! As mentioned earlier, periwinkle was the "wedding color" by default, and it was starting to feel a bit too "Martha Stewart-y" for me, and I wanted to put a "janet" touch to it, so of course, I wanted magenta accents! At the last minute, hot pink became my accent color for the wedding, and I scrambled to put it everywhere, including fucshia Swarovski Crystals on my pearl necklace and my "blue" anklet! For the favors, I went to the Honolulu Craft Supply and found cute little fucshia flowers, and we hot-glue-gunned them to the periwinkle ribbons. Thank goodness periwinkle goes well with fucshia, or I would be one mad bridezilla! It's on King Street near McCully? (808)942-5044. Singing Hawaiian Ladies I can't remember the names of these women off the top of my head, so I'm going to have to write this part later.... Most of our NYC friends are in the music industry, so we wanted something TOTALLY different and "very Hawaii!" The trio plays guitar, ukulele, and bass, they they have the sweetest, most melodic voices--we had them sing outside near our wedding ceremony spot before & during the wedding. I will list their contact info later. JN Productions We had a morning wedding and a brunch reception, so we didn't feel like "entertaining" our guests much--we just wanted them to enjoy the food and the company they were with! The only "entertainment" we had, was that we felt we had a bunch of guests who knew either one or the other of us, so we put together a slide show that was edited like a music video. A quarter of it was on me from birth to adulthood, a quarter on Merv, a quarter on us together from when we met, and the last part, was--and I have no idea how they put it together so fast, but our wedding rehearsal! Yuko (she's amazing!), came to our wedding rehearsal, videotaped it, and put together a montage! She even clipped in a bunch of videotape images that my bridesmaid, Gretchen, took the week before our wedding. I'll get the number later. Angelo Pietro We wanted a super casual rehearsal dinner where we could relax the night before with our family and close friends, so we picked Angelo Pietro, which is a Japanese-Italian restaurant. At the Ala Moana location, they have a room that's slightly separated from the rest of the restaurant, so we took that section over. It's inexpensive, casual, and central in location. BTW, we love their salad dressing! www.angelopietro.com IS Stationary I can't seem to find any info on them at the moment, so they might not be around anymore, but they used to be on 17th St, and they had the coolest stationary! We had a really cool vellum card with a kind of retro, very clean line design on the front, and Merv designed the inside. We couldn't find matching RSVP cards, so Merv & I handmade them ourselves at home! Beach Party Location Because our guests flew in from so many places, we wanted to make sure that they went to some of our favorite places, so we hosted a beach BBQ at my favorite beach, about 3 days before the wedding! My favorite, is Sherwood Forest, which is a beach located in between Bellows Air Force Base, and Waimanalo Beach. It's an unmarked beach, so it's not that crowded, mainly a local beach. The view is spectacular, it's far away from the touristy beaches, and the waves are just right for boogieboarding! Costco Merv's brother, Dan, who was also Merv's Best Man, and his family helped Merv host our Beach Party! In order to get the hamburger buns, meat, hot dogs, chips, and all the other necessities in large quantities, my mom took them to Costco, which happens to be located right next to my brother's new autoplex, the Tony Group! www.costco.com Sushi Company The day after our wedding, we had yet another party at my parent's house. This time, it was a "kimono" party, where Merv and I got dressed up in my parent's wedding kimonos! For this party, my mom called her friend, Mrs. Ogura of Sushi Company, to cater our party! They're very reasonably priced, and her presentation is nice, too! You can also just drop by for take out sushi, too--they're on the corner of McCully & Beretania: (808)947-5411 Mrs. Ono My grandmother used to be a hair dresser and professional kimono stylist back in the day in Hamamatsu, and Mrs. Ono used to be one of her student, and has her own salon now. She's a dear, dear friend of my grandmother's, and she flew in from Japan for my wedding and to help dress me and Merv in my parents' kimonos! It's a really intricate process (she even painted my hands, neck, and face!), and most people don't know how to do it--in Japan, you have to go to a specialist to get this sort of thing done right, and most people don't even have their own wedding kimonos--most people rent them, and it costs something incredibly expensive, like $10,000 a day! Thankfully, my mother had hers made, and I think it's the most beautiful thing in the world, and I am so glad I got to wear it! Mrs. Ono even handcarried the wig and all the hair ornaments from Japan. I'm extremely grateful for her expertise! Suit Rentals for the Groomsmen You know, I know where it is, but I can't remember the name of the place off the top of my head, so I'll have to write this part in later. We bought matching pink ties for all the groomsmen, but had them rent the black suits so that they'd all match.
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