Polaroid Photobooth

What do you get when you cross a professional photographer, a polaroid
camera, costumes, too much champagne before food, and a wedding?

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It's About Time

I'm on a boat in the middle of the Pacific ocean, staring at a star formation, when it hits me like a freight train. I must marry Lauren. There is no question in my mind. All the years (12 to be precise) of questioning if she's the right person to spend the rest of my life with and commit to fully are now in the past. See, we both come from families where the marriage of our parents has been such a challenge that we fear repeating history, to repeat our parents mistakes, to live our lives without the fulfillment that marriage is supposed to bring.

Until my sailing journey, I've felt like a child in our relationship. It's easy to revert to baby talk and joking when serious topics approach my peripheral vision, to avoid the long and hard discussions about past, present, and future.

Something changed in me out there, with time to reflect and meditate with the ocean as my guide and the stars my confidant. In almost an instant, during that time where space and time no longer have finite edges, where the ocean meets the sky meets the heavens meets the universe, I felt myself grow up, ready to step up and be a man, and to take the next step with the person that is most dear to me and who has been with me through the formative years, helping me through the most difficult of growing pains and allowing me to be there when she was doing the same. I was finally ready to ask her to spend the rest of our lives together. I wrote a letter asking her to marry me that very day (we love writing letters to each other when traveling apart) and held onto it for the next 3 weeks.

Over the next 20 days, I found a piece of wood (ring stores are hard to find in the middle of the Pacific) and started to carve it into a necklace. The design would be a representation of the stars that guided me to Hilo - that were there when I didn't want to be on the boat anymore, when I wanted to share my experience and my joy with someone or something, when I couldn't wait to get home and be with the person that mattered most in my life.

When we finally met in Hawai'i after 5 weeks apart, I immediately knew I made the right choice. We spent the next few days talking about our own individual experiences during our separation. It was wonderful to hold her again and to be able to share experiences again.

We visited Lili'uokalani Gardens in Hilo and all of a sudden we come upon this enormous tree that we both thought was amazing and I immediately knew that's where I would ask.

After she spent a few minutes trying to identify the plants (I love my little botany nerd), I told her I had another letter for her and we sat down to read it. I had the timing planned where I would wait until she flipped over the letter, would start to get down on my knee and get the necklace out of my pocket (I had been carrying it and the letter around for 2 days until the right opportunity), but she skimmed over that letter so fast that I pretty much had to dive to the ground before she read the sentence, "Will you marry me?" (she was expecting the proposal!).

She said "YES!" without hesitation and we spent the next few minutes holding each other and crying and shaking. When the dust settled, we were looking at each other and all of a sudden she had a look of despair before she asked, "does this mean we have to plan a wedding?". Yes, yes it does. And it will be the best wedding of 2011.