My Island Wedding

Despite living in Sydney for most of my life, I’ve always been an Island girl at heart. So it’s no surprise that my partner chose sunset on Aitutaki lagoon in the Cook Islands as ‘the perfect moment’ to propose. I had always envisioned an Island wedding, not only because we both had family ties to the South Pacific, but because I believe there is no where else on Earth more beautiful.

We had travelled to most of the Pacific already so when it came to choosing an Island we had a pretty good idea. It had to be meaningful, good value for money and with the flexibility to design our own day. Seeing as we are both half-Fijian we figured a wedding in Fiji would be colossal. (I have a cousin who invited 200 people to their wedding, and 400 people turned up!). And we didn’t know the Cook Islands or New Zealand well enough to try to organise an overseas wedding within a couple of months. Then there was Vanuatu, where my mum had moved to about 15 years prior, which meant both myself and my partner had spent many years travelling back and forth to Port Vila, so we knew the place well. We chose to have our ceremony by the ocean at my family home in Paradise Cove and our reception on the beach at Erakor Island Resort, a 5-minute boat ride from the mainland on a gorgeous turquoise lagoon.

Something to consider

An overseas wedding means not everyone can attend as it’s a huge cost to guests who pay for flights, accommodation, spending money and also take time off work to spend this day with you. But it does mean that the people who do make it are your absolute nearest and dearest. This was important to us, to keep our wedding small and intimate, filled with people that had been a part of our journey thus far. On the plus side, an overseas wedding gives all of your guests a holiday! Our guests were able to spend at least a week, attend pre and post wedding activities and have a couple of days to explore the Island which is obviously a bonus guests don’t get when the party’s round the corner. Nothing beats that feeling of being a part of a 100-plus wedding party in a tropical destination, sipping on cocktails, wandering the markets and beaches feeling that vibe build up to the big day.

All or nothing

I was a classic ‘I can do everything’ bride. It couldn’t be that hard right? Forgoing a wedding planner meant that on the morning of my wedding my mum and husband-to-be were unloading chairs from a truck and setting up the ceremony. It meant that mum and aunty were later cracking warm beers for our 140 guests. Oh and they were warm because dear husband had loaded the beers into Eskies and dear brother had dropped off the 20 bags of ice that morning – but the ice never actually made it into the Eskies. Oops.

I also thought I could make my own bridal bouquets. We have sprawling tropical gardens around our house, and I thought how easy would it be to whip up some gorgeous greenery and white gingers. That morning I realised I in fact didn’t have time to do that myself and had to enlist the help of a local wedding supplier at the last minute.

You’ve got to choose to either try to do everything yourself – or not have to do anything and hire a wedding planner. Consider the impact this has on your family if you don’t have a wedding planner, as they are the ones who will be helping you to pull off the day. We called on anyone and everyone who could help. We flew friends of friends over to do our photos and videos, the groom’s sister brought all of her baking ingredients and tools in her luggage to bake our wedding cake as well as personalised cookies for table name cards, we had our little cousins singing, playing guitar and being ushers and lucky for me my fashion designer mother made my dream wedding dress for me.

Things that can go wrong

Things work differently in the Islands. You’ve got to be a little flexible if things don’t pan out exactly how you envision, but it also means that incredible things can happen … that could only happen in the Islands.

Like when our photographers, God bless them, locked their keys in the car with all their equipment after they had finished photographing the groom getting ready. No one told me this until a few days later, lucky because can you imagine the meltdown! This is at 1pm on a Saturday afternoon in Port Vila, where EVERYTHING shuts down at midday. Our friends at Europcar had someone at the resort with the spare key within ten minutes. Now tell me where, in Sydney, or anywhere else for that matter that could be done. No extra fees, no questions asked, despite everyone probably having gone home for the day already. Amazing. Or the fact that we could design our entire reception menu to include Cook Island raw fish salad, Fijian chicken curry, fresh seafood from the outer islands plus a couple of whole pigs – an Island wedding staple. And where else can the bridal party cruise around town hanging off the back of a ute on the way to the reception? Or where can you a have the pre-wedding party take over an entire waterfront bar where all the guests jump in the ocean before midnight? Our reception venue, Erakor Island Resort, was so accommodating in bringing my ‘everything white and greenery’ vision to life and allowing us to run our party on the beach with hakas, Cook Island singing, an Abba performance as well as an after party set up on the end of the Island.

Then there are the little things that get lost in translation. You spend so much time meticulously planning all the details that no one notices anyway. I dreamt of our first dance to our special song. After we made our entrance at the reception and took our seats at the bridal table, low and behold our ‘first dance’ song comes on. Everyone entirely oblivious of course, but there I was gripping my now husband’s leg saying through clenched teeth “OMG, it’s the first dance song. Make it stop”. The poor best man had to rush to the DJ and get him to fade out the song to something else.

Oh and then there’s the story of how I lost my engagement ring three days before the wedding … But I’ll save that story for the book ;-).

As the sun set on the most perfect Pacific day, we sat with our feet in the sand looking out across all the tables filled with our smiling and laughing family and friends thinking, ‘Wow. We cannot believe all these people made it here to this tiny little island – for us’.