I had the privilege of traveling to Oahu, Hawaii to shoot Will and Bonnie’s private elopement this past July! Originally, their elopement was supposed to be in October of 2020, but as we all know, covid-19 had us all confined within our homes. After some more time planning and choosing a new date for the elopement, Hawaii had closed their borders to visitors and vacationers alike in order to try and help stop the rise in covid cases on the island. This caused us to play the waiting game and see when the border ban would be lifted in order to head there and shoot!

After a couples of months, we were able to settle on July 2021 for the new date of the elopement! I packed my bags and headed to the airport to meet up with them. Bonnie and Will showed me the best spots around the island. I tried spam musubi, onigiri, poké and ube pancakes all for the first time ever! I can say it was absolutely delicious! I also discovered Foodland, which is one of Hawaii’s grocery stores. I’ll definitely be dreaming about shopping there daily, it has big Publix meets Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s vibes.

The day of the elopement, we woke up at 3 am HST (9 am EST for my Florida people) to get our hike on! We hiked for about an hour and twenty minutes or so under the stars. The night sky in Hawaii is so crazy clear, you can see molecular clouds and millions of stars. It looked so surreal. By the time we got to our special location, the sun decided to peek itself over the clouds and the water.

We started with a first look, Bonnie tapped Will on the shoulder. Once he turned around, he was all giggles and smiles. It was like it was out of a fairytale. The sky, the weather, the landscape, the special shared moment between the two of them, it was all perfect! We continued throughout the area and used the different elements to our advantage, Will’s favorite being the mountains and Bonnie’s the ocean and black rocks! We eventually got a short little period of light mist, queue all of the PNW/mystical energy!!!