Weiwei & James are married!! If you don’t remember, I shot their Taiwanese style engagement session at San Francisco City Hall a few months ago.I don’t think I ever talked about how I met these two love birds. I shot an international wedding in Taiwan last year, and I had dinner with an old classmate of mine. Fast forward about 8 months, out of the blue I got an email from him and said he has a very good friend that’s getting married in Hawaii, and they would like to hire me as their wedding photographer. Hmmmm…..yes please!! I have not met Weiwei & James, (or even spoken with them on the phone for that matter) before I met them for the engagement session in San Francisco. But within minutes of meeting them, we were like old friends. I had to brush up on my Mandarin speaking skills, though!

So last weekend, their long awaited wedding finally arrived, and it was everything I thought it would be and more. This wedding marked a lot of first for me; first wedding in Hawaii, first time on a catamaran ride, and first time I was thanked by the couple in front of ALL the guests during the typical wedding thank you speech. 🙂 I love my couples!! Weiwei & James followed a typical Taiwanese tradition for their wedding. The groom had to go through a series of games put together by the bridesmaids before he could see his bride. The games are designed to test his strength, will and to prove his undying love for his bride…..okay maybe not. They are just fun games to humiliate the groom!! Luckily for James, his groomsmen finished most of the games for him. The games included changing into superman outfit in 1 minute, and posting 5 pictures to Facebook (thank you social media), guess which lip print belongs to his bride (he picked his father-in-law’s by the way…awkward), and finally he had to say I LOVE YOU WEIWEI in five different languages. After James completed all the tasks he was finally allowed to see his bride. By tradition, he still had to ask Weiwei again to marry him. And of course she said yes!

After the festivities at the hotel, we headed onto the actual ceremony. An absolutely BREATHTAKING chapel on the shores of Waikiki called Ko Olina, Chapel Place of Joy, off the shores of Oahu. It was a fairly small chapel, but very popular. They had NINE weddings in one day!

I also want to give a special shout out to my good friend Nathan Nowack of flying out to Waikiki to shoot this wedding with me!!

Thank you again to Weiwei & James for just being such awesome people, your generosity and hospitality were truly refreshing. Best of luck to you both on your new chapter in life!

Here’s a list of the outstanding vendors that made the day possible;

Getting Ready Venue | Waikiki Sheraton
Reception | Halekulani
Ceremony | Ko Olina Chapel Place of Joy
Photographer | Jeremy Chou Photoworks
Associate Photographer | Nathan Nowack
Videographer | Kai Media Hawaii