A Wedding in Paradise

As you may remember, I mentioned that we were headed to Kauai soon (for the 3rd year in a row....no complaints!) for my brother-in-law, Logan and his fiance, Manisha's wedding. We just got back yesterday after a fun-filled trip and a long day of traveling. It's nice to be home, but I'm sad to go back to work tomorrow.

For any past trips that I've taken or that we've taken together, we've never really had any issues with flights or delays. Unfortunately, our trip this time was much different. The inbound flight out to Los Angeles was delayed by 2 1/2 hours so they switched our flights around as soon as we got the airport. Anyway, it all ended up working out and we were upgraded (for free!) to bulkhead seats both ways for our long flight.

This trip was different than our previous two because we had a lot of friends and family on the island to hang out with. Here are some photos from the trip!



 



A crane on our balcony.



Our 4-wheeling group on our way to our first adventure!

Our friends Rocky and Nikki's Jeep after the first part of our trip.



We had SO much fun in our Jeep that we popped a tire! Rocky and Mitch had to replace it right there.

The ginormous house and property that my brother-in-law and his fiance rented for the wedding.

On this property, there were tons of coconut trees. Mitch and his older brother Nathan developed an obsession with getting the coconuts down and cracking them open. Due to this obsession, this happened:



He would have had a black eye if he hadn't been wearing sunglasses. But the sunglasses left a nice impression beneath his eye. Our friend Rocky was helpful enough to Google this type of accident and inform us that 150 people die per year from a coconut falling on them.



Nathan taking a turn trying to crack open a coconut.



The reception site.



A violinist played music before the ceremony started.




Mitch's parents walking down the aisle.



Mitch's older brother Nathan and Manisha's sister, Melisha.



Mitch and Manisha's friend, Diana.

Waiting for the bride.



The kiss!

The new Mr. & Mrs!

Making it official and signing the Marriage License.

One of the tables for the reception.

Me and the hubs at the reception.

The first dance. Sorry for the blurriness; my camera is horrible if anyone/anything is moving.

As a suprise to everyone, the bride and groom had a fire dancer come to entertain the guests.

The wedding was so beautiful and in such a gorgeous setting. Everything turned out really pretty.

Awkward transition....

The next day we were having dinner in our condo and I had a fight with the oven. The oven won.



We headed back out the next day to have some more fun in our rentals.

Airin' down the tires.



The Grand Canyon of Kauai.



One of the ridges on the Na Pali coastline.

One of the beaches we took the Jeeps on.

The dirty rentals after all the fun.

All 16 of us went Ziplining together.

The sunset on one of the final days we were there.

It was so sad to come back. We were having such a relaxing time. It's even sadder to think that I have to go to work tomorrow. I'm glad I took today off though to have a "transition" day. Off to go change the laundry load!

The Cake

Okay, as mentioned before, I had a HUGE baking project that I volunteered to do for my brother-in-law and fiance for their wedding shower last weekend. I maintained my sanity throughout the entire ordeal (for the most part) with only a few minor hiccups. Thank goodness my mom was there though to assist and to take photos. I was so "in the zone", I WAS NOT going to stop to take photos as this was a very important cake.

They had a very large couples bridal shower at my in-laws house because they are getting married in Kauai in less than two weeks and many people would not be able to travel to the wedding. Our third year in a row in Kauai! I can't say I'm complaining.....

Working away on the frosting.

I had to set up an additional table in the dining room area to hold all the cake!

Assembling the cake and trying to not look at the camera because I was gross looking due to not having showered yet.

My dad was sooooo helpful! If you haven't worked with fondant before, it is an extreme forearm workout to knead it and work in any colors you might be adding. My forearms are not very strong for this so I begged my dad and he agreed to jump in an help.

My dad hating his life right now.....

Assembling the cake at my in-laws house.



The finished product!!!!! It turned out soooooo stickin' beautiful! I was so happy! By the way, one of the benefits about being married to a General Contractor is being able to ask him to make a custom cake stand for you because you don't want to rent one and you don't want to put it on cardboard.

Me, my brother-in-law, Logan and his fiance, Manisha and THE CAKE.

Aren't they so cute?!?!?

Toby

I feel like every photo my mom and I take together, we are eating cake. I have a photo exactly like this from my wedding.

The next day, we celebrated Mitch's and Manisha's birthday (they are on the same day) and a local restuarant.

Mitch go to open his gift from everyone.....an iPad!

Such a fun weekend. I'm glad I'm done with the cake. As I did with my first cake, I told Mitch, "Next time I want to do a cake, remind of this". It didn't work the first time, and it obviously isn't going to work this time as I already promised to make a Spongebob cake at the end of the month. Hmmmm....spongebob. I'll have to think about how to do that one.