The Wedding of the Year

Nicole and Jake got married on Friday!!!

This is part of the reason that June flew by so quickly - wedding prep, and lots of fun with the Bachelorette, extra massages for family members, and dinners with a whole bunch of people from Idaho and Ohio.

It was a pleasure to meet all of Nicole and Jake's family and friends - an awesome crew of people, as to be expected. Nicole is one of those people that I'm magnetically drawn to. She is grounded, successful, happy, and has a great approach to and appreciation of life. I have that with a very select few people from home, and I wasn't sure if I would ever find that in others, espeically here on Maui, where so many people seem transient, flighty, and unsure of themselves. Luckily I found that in several Mauians, and Nicole is one of them. I'm honored to call her a friend, and I look forward to a lot more happy memories with she and Jake.

This was actually my first Hawaiian wedding, and some of the ceremonial traditions were very moving. My favorite was when the officient asked Jake and Nicole to turn and face their friends and family, and to accept the love for them that was brought by each person. He asked them to meet each person in the eye, to have an exchange of love. It was a big wedding - over 200 people there - so the exchange took a rather long time, but it was so powerful.

The reception was awesome too - Ryan Robinson band played, and I sang a couple songs with them. Ryan and I surprised Nicole with "Lucky" by Jason Mraz feat. Colby Callait, and that went over really well. She had originally wanted that as her first dance song, but Jake wasn't in love with it, so they went with something they both loved. But she still really like that song. I hope that we get to see video of that soon because I have no idea what I sounded like. Or maybe I don't want to see video, cuz in my head it sounded AWESOME.

We closed down the reception, shaking our groove thing until the very last minute. It was such a happy, awesome wedding.

The next day I met Nicole and a bunch of ladies for a performance of 'Ulalena, which is a musical theater production about the history of Maui. The lights, the set, the actors, the vocalists....the whole production was incredible. It reminded me a bit of the fantastic-ness of a Cirque performance, but with the polynesian culture and mythological characters. The musicians were elevated off the the right of the stage, and were lit so you could watch them the whole time as well - lots of traditional instrumentation....just breathtaking. It was amazing. I'm totally going back.

As with any major event like this, I just can't believe that it's gone and past. But then I'm reminded when Nicool so goofily answers the phone..."This is MRS. FREEMAN!"