A Starter Plan for Having a Wedding In Hawai‘i Without a Wedding Planner & Without Breaking The Bank
Making the plan.
Congratulations! You’re engaged, you’ve both committed to embark on a life-long journey together, and now the wedding plans. You’ve decided to DIY it and don’t know where to start? Taking the reigns on yourself, there’s a lot of things to keep track of and start to piece together. It can feel overwhelming trying to figure out where to even begin.
Hiring a wedding planner or coordinator can be expensive, but depending on the kind of wedding that you both are looking to have, it might be worth considering. It’s takes finesse and is quite the character building experiencing, and I definitely tip my hat off to them. I’m by no means an expert, just someone who’s gone down this path and wanting to give others my experience and tools I created that may help others as they head on this road.
I put down some main topics to create a framework or start to your plan. Alongside this, I’ve also included my personal “master grid” planning sheet with tabs to help you for your wedding planning. Fine tune it to fit what you need for your day. Consider this something borrowed to check off your list already.
A Starting Place…
Budget
Timeline
Venue - Reception & Ceremony
Planning tools
Your circle
Budget. It’s by no means the fun thing to talk about but highly necessary if you’re considering costs.
You should both come in agreement on a number. It will be foundational to work within to start creating your vision of your wedding. Be sure to include in your number all things from your wedding dress to the venue and more.
If you’re both already managing your individual budgets, then start a budget plan together for the month that you’ll be married (yay!). Don’t worry if you need to start either, getting your budget together before planning the rest was very helpful for us, especially since we were planning on moving in together too after the wedding and also go on our honeymoon. There were just a lot of moving parts for us that we wanted to forecast with our wedding planning and not have to worry about discussing after the wedding.
One app that is very easy and user friendly in getting together a budget is the Every Dollar app. This was helpful for individual budgeting. When it came to getting one together this template sheet from Dave Ramsay’s resources was what was used to forecast a budget for the wedding but also for afterwards when we’d be on our honeymoon and then moving in together. It’s a template, so we made it customized it. Use whatever’s easiest and simple for you.
This also helps to really see how realistic it will be to stick with the number with also considering the wedding size you’re both desiring. I’m sure you’ll keep this in mind when you’re looking at wedding venues, but at least you can go in with a baseline when scouting with the size estimated to help determine if the venue will work with your budget, or if you’ll want to compromise on the size in order to have the venue.
Timeline.
The time from “will you marry me?” to then saying “I do”, can vary for couples. For some, the engagement period is longer, and for others it’s shorter. In either case, you should agree on this to know when to start making moves.
Once we got engaged, we knew we didn’t want to wait that long to get married. That saying, “when you know, you know”, was very true for us.
The question was, where could we have a wedding based on our budget, wedding size, and around a not so busy season? I’ve heard from other couples, location came up at the forefront and framed their budget and timeline. If you have a specific place in mind, that’s meaningful for the both of you, then it really makes it about budgeting for the opening they have and by that date.
Once we found our venues that we wanted, we worked with the venue manager to find a date available. We didn’t want our engagement period to be a long one. That being said, when she came back and told us that beginning of the year was open, it really gave us the opportunity to have our wedding within five months. We also wanted our Pastor to be the one to marry us, so when he said he could during that time, it was go time from there. We booked the date. We knew our budget, confirmed our venues and our officiant, and set a date. From here, it took drawing out a rough timeline to build on.
Start to map out your timeline by working backwards to create a timeline from your wedding date to whatever date you’re starting at. You can then start to fill in the timeline with deadlines and to-do’s that’ll help you see your roadmap clearer. Keep adding or subtracting as needed, but the main thing is to start tracking it. Especially since you’re doing it yourself, this will help to also formulate when you should be communicating and meeting with people i.e. wedding invites, RSVPs, officiant, core wedding team, etc.
Venue.
Location can be the difference in dollars so consider the percentage you want to spend on it.
Seeing as you’re reading this, you’ve both decided to marry in Hawai‘i. Who wouldn’t want to, right? However, not all venues are created equal. Hotels and resorts can seem like a great option to accommodate guests, getting ready, food/beverage, etc., but it will come at a cost. Usually pretty steep costs at that to cover the venue and minimum for food and beverage, not to mention any rentals or furniture they have will also be an added cost. Each location has their own policy that you should discuss in person or vetting first with their team.
Something we also learned that was so helpful, is having a venue that works with the vendors and managing all of that instead of you directing each vendor, vendor invoices, and their setup/breakdown, and just overall communication management. If not, just know that you’ll have to take that role on. You should ask the manager at the potential venue about furniture (eg table, chairs, tents, dining wear, linens, etc.), tech equipment (mics, amp, power strips, etc), dance floor, sound tech, and any other things that come to mind that may be included and if not, ask if they have third party vendors that they directly work with to vet those items for you.
We wanted our ideal venue to have food and beverage, servers, venue furniture, audio/tech equipment and support, and communication management all included. This was ideal for us also because we wanted there to be little to no involvement for setup and breakdown other than venue staff and vendors. We also just didn’t want a bunch of stuff to have to worry about. I’ll cover more on this in my next post “How to have a zero waste wedding, with nearly zero cleanup.”
Here’s a list of some items you can consider including in your search for the perfect venue for your wedding:
Availability within the year or estimated season
Ceremony and reception size limit (accommodates how many people)
Venue fee (sometimes a minimum spend or separate fee that’s part of the deposit)
Food and beverage minimum if applicable
Food and beverage menu if applicable
Are tables, tents, chairs, a/v equipment a part of the venue inclusion? Or would this require a vendor?
If vendors will be needed at any point, will communication and coordination be handled by the venue? Or would this be your responsibility?
Try to think creatively too. Just because you’ve seen most weddings at certain locations doesn’t mean that there aren’t other gems up for grabs. Restaurants, event spaces, breweries, farms, parks, local churches… all are worth thinking about. It’s also fun to visualize and go in person together. It’s your wedding day, you both should dream to enjoy it too!
You could even have two venues — one for the ceremony and one for the reception. Sometimes, the vibe for the reception isn’t what you’re wanting for the ceremony and visa versa. You don’t have to be fixed to one location. We actually wanted an intimate ceremony on the beach, so we had the ceremony at the beach (link to post) with selected invited guests only, and then met everyone at our reception venue.
A venue that helped make our wedding come together was Haleiwa Joes. They were situated on the North Shore, where we wanted to get married, had space to accommodate our wedding size and also handled all vendor management, which was amazing. Since they’re a restaurant, they also took care of our food, beverage, and bar for the reception as well, with their staff to service our guests.
Anything we needed extra to vet from vendors i.e. tables, chairs, dance floor, tech equipment and onsite support, bar, and more they handled. They worked with their partner vendors to get it done, get things there, and then coordinate getting rentals out of there without us being involved.
Planning tools.
Use what you got, and keep it simple. Whatever works for you will give you the confidence and the ability to make a plan and communicate it to others.
Trying to keep everything in my notes on my phone wasn’t getting us anywhere, so I had to start putting it altogether in a less chaotic way. This was for my mind, for our meetings with the venue, and also it just made it easier to communicate together and to others with. Talking about something versus seeing it outlined or drawn out kept things organized and also on track. I was so worried about missing a deadline or forgetting something that this helped me.
From my ending place, to your starting place, here’s some goodies for you my friend:
The Goods (templates to start planning)
DIY Wedding Planning Master Grid Template includes all of the moving parts —
Week out timeline
Reception venue layout
Day prior schedule
Overview Wedding day schedule
Ceremony schedule
Ceremony photo shot list
Reception program schedule
Sound grid
Emcee grid
Guest check in list
Overview guest headcount breakdown
Setup team task checklist
Breakdown team task checklist
Your Circle. What I mean by this is your friend circle — your tribe, your people that are your closest and trustworthy through and through. They’ve stood by you and are people who will stand by you to support you on your day.
In my experience, even with a one stop shop venue and having your grids and layouts, when it comes to wedding planning the DIY way, I quickly found out that it was going to mean having help. Extra help to DIY the ceremony coordination, reception program, floral arranging with me, setting up decor, breaking down to secure items for us, rehearsal, and pickup/dropoff runs and other tasks needed along the way. There was no way we could’ve done it all. Well, we could’ve (because where there’s a will, there’s a way), but we wouldn’t have had the wedding we ended up having without our people.
If you’re reading this feeling overwhelmed, check your circle, friend. Chances are they are over the moon happy for you and would be honored for the chance to help you out on your special day. Take it from someone who tries hard to do everything by herself, I’ve learned to let go and lean on God, and to also lean on the ones He’s placed in my life. You know who those people are. Thankfully before I even asked, I already had some of my tribe taking on things. Let them! You need the help and this is a monumental moment where those people who’ve been on the journey with you, also get to also be a part of making it happen. Think about other weddings you’ve been asked to be a core support for the couple, it’s an honor and also really cool to be asked and to contribute to a day they’re treasuring and will cherish forever.
Our day wouldn’t have been the day that it was without their support. It was an act of love that made our wedding that much sweeter. You could feel it and see it. It was beautiful. Don’t do it alone. Plus it’s way more fun having your tribe to go at it with you!