Last couple days in Hawaii

After our wedding, Rillz and I were able to have a little fun, stress free! We spent a day with Kristi, Jeff, and the boys site seeing. Our first stop was visiting a cemetery where Rillz's close relatives have been buried. Rillz wanted to show his respect and place our wedding flower arrangements at the headstone.

A spiritual stop was the Oahu Mormon temple. Rillz and I are not currently active in any religion but are always open to knowing more about all religions. Kristi and Jeff are very active in the LDS religion and wanted to visit the temple. We tagged along. The Oahu Temple has an amazing visitors center. And, like all temples I have seen, the Oahu temple has beautiful grounds and building structure.

Once leaving the temple we headed off to eat. Our stomachs were making more noise then the two boys in the middle seats. :) We stopped at Giovanni's shrimp shack. I make it a point to visit that place at least once when I go to Oahu. Kristi and Jeff loved it as much as we always do! Yum. Dessert anyone? That is when Matsumoto comes into play. Ahhh... who doesn't love an amazing flavor of Hawaiian shaved ice with ice cream at the bottom.

Mahalo for virtually following us on our special Hawaii trip! One we will NEVER forget.

Wedding day part 2

I have attempted to finish posting on our wedding but get so frustrated by the old way of uploading photos. It took FOREVER to upload a photo, assuming it even uploaded. So I got so fed up I just stopped trying. But I just discovered that blogger has changed their upload system and is now way easier. So here goes attempt #...too many!

Photos taken between ceremony and reception:

Rivera side

Hollingsworth side

Malaythong's

We love them! Two days before our wedding Rillz was feeling very sick and didn't look to good. These guys took good care of him and made some SUPER yummy soup to make him better and Davy had us stay over to get away from stress at the house :)

Friends

I love my flowers! So bright and colorful

Looks like I am smelling my armpit!

These boys are so funny

Davy had these random sunglasses laying around his house. They just happened to be our wedding colors and so they just had to wear them!

In some of these pictures we were waiting forever to get the "perfect" splash on the rocks behind us.

Isn't he handsome!

Downtown Honolulu. People loved staring. And there was a parade going on at this moment

This was our card box. I layered the bottom with moss

This was our "guest book" Quilt squares that I am making a quilt with

Table decoration. The driftwood from the ceremony and then flower arrangements

Our Cake. Our florist SAVED the cake! The hotel did not do what I wanted with it so the florist put all the flowers on it. I ended up loving it! The hotel forgot to set out the cake cutting knife too so we just used our dinner utensils.

Table centerpieces. Simple but I liked them

Our wedding favors. Soy sauce bottles with our names and wedding date on them! Rillz came up with this idea and it was awesome. (Not so awesome filling 250 bottles though!)

I like this picture! Just looks happy

The dessert plates were decorated so cute!

These two were so cute! Gunnar and Mali just danced like no one was watching

Who doesn't get teary eyed when dancing with their dad!

Can you believe the hotels tablecloth. So ugly and out dated. Haha!

The garter tradition thing has always been such a weird concept for me. Rillz wanted to do it though. So, there he goes. :)

Mom is a crier! I love my in-laws

Filipinos have a different style of money dance. The guests place money on the bride and then the groom has to get it with his mouth. And vice versa with me getting it. My dad placed it on my butt. (see it rolled up where my train is buttoned up)

Rillz getting some booty action! Haha.

We took a picture on the beach. Haha (we ran out of time to go to the actual beach and take pictures and there was just too many tourists on the beach by the hotel)

I loved my hair! Marlou did an amazing job.

I like the colors in this one. This is the hotel lobby.

More pictures...

Can you believe Kristi with straight hair?!?

Finally, I was able to download some photos! Here is Rillz and my special day together. The beginning to a new Rivera family. I am so happy and excited to spend my life with this loving, caring, funny, hard working man!

I love you Rillz! Thanks for choosing me to be your wife!

We wouldn't have been able to have a stress free wedding without the HUGE help of Rillz's family and friends. A big thank you to Beang, Mike, Davy, Marlou and Arlene for all your help on our wedding day!

Wedding Day Part 1

Wedding preperation/ceremony...

The day began at 4:00 A.M. Arlene and Marlou were arriving to start on hair and make-up. Both moms, Girlie, Kristi and I were getting hair and make-up done. Kristi and I didn't start our sessions until 6:00. So we just sat back for a couple hours laughing and talking with everyone. Arlene and Marlou are so good at what they do! They made us all look and feel so beautiful! The day before Marlou asked if me and Kristi wanted fake eyelashes. And Kristi said "Yeah, if it doesn't make me look like Bambi". Living in Hawaii, Marlou doesn't see deer like we do in Idaho and responded "What you don't want to look like a stripper". Haha! So the next morning we joked about having eyelashes like Bambi... the stripper, not a deer.

My shoes and earings were found online after intense searching. The shoes came from somewhere international and smelled so funny when I got them. I loved both of them! The garter... such a weird thing to me. Rillz wanted to do the whole garter toss thing so the day before the wedding I went and got one. Odd concept to me. Oh well.


Our rings in the awesome pokey flower!

My wedding dress in the hotel lobby. The photographer had the hotel staff hang it for her.

Girlie getting her face put on by Marlou

Doesn't this picture look like Kristi... The first time I looked at it I had to re-look. It is me, not Kristi.


But here is Kristi with Arlene getting her prettied up

Girlie all done and waiting. She was crackin me up!

My mom looking like death at this moment. She was a 4 a.m. appointment. Barely awake

Getting the dress on...

My mom already to go! Doesn't she look beautiful!

For some reason I like this one...

The guys were getting ready and I heard from my photographer that they were pretty funny! As you can see, they were busy putting each others shirts on and on backwards. Davy happened to have those goofy glasses in our wedding colors for each one of them to wear.

I happen to think Rillz is handsome :)

Why do boys have it so easy to get ready. It's light out and they get to just chill for a while. The girls started getting ready when some of the boys just got back from the bars.

Davy getting ready...

Elmer getting ready...

Rillz spending time on his hair. I wonder how nervous he was ?!?

The hotel is about 5 minutes away (in car), in a normal city, from Kaka'ako waterfront park (the ceremony place). But, when there is a huge floral parade that morning and a farmers market at Kaka'ako, that we found out about the night before, it could take a good 45 minutes. Yep, took about 35 minutes to get there. And luckily the farmers market was nothing to worry about.

Thanks to Davy, we had a live guy playing the songs we chose during the ceremony on acustic guitar. That was SO beautiful!

While guests waited he played: A Simple Love Song by Anuhea

While the bridal party walked down he played: Better Together by Jack Johnson

While I walked down he played: E Ku'u Morning Dew

When the ceremony was over he played: I honestly can't remember right now. Haha.

The ceremony was nice. Reverand Michael Nelson married us. He had kind of a weird vibe. When he started saying his speal he said "Thanks for all being here for Aurelio and Cindy on their special day". Yep, Cindy. He didn't think it was very funny when I looked around and said "Am I at the wrong wedding? Anyone here named Cindy getting married today?" I thought it was HILARIOUS! It's his fault he didn't know who he was marrying at his 9 a.m. appointment and deserved to be embarresed. That sounds mean on my part... but it was still funny!

Exchanging rings


Elmer and Kristi

Davy and Girlie

Brent walked my mom down

So happy!

Just Married!


It's the reverend marrying Aurelio and Cindy... haha

Me and my dad walking down. (Obviously these pictures aren't in the order that everyone actually walked down).

Gracie, the flower girl, walking down with mom and dad Rivera

Brecken, the flower boy, walked down with Jeff.

Nana and Nan walked down together

The aisle decoration

Hooray for being married now! We then took pictures... and more pictures! It was a lot of fun. Our photographer was found on Hawaii craigslist. At an awesome deal I must admit. Of course coming from craigslist I was quite skeptical. We met with her, Lora, a week before and after meeting we were way excited. Lucky us, she really turned out great! Our reception started at 12:30 so we figured we had lots of time between to do all sorts of pictures. Well, time ran out FAST. At 11:30 we were getting phone calls saying "get your butts headed back to the hotel". The parade was in full swing and the exact route we needed to take back. We didn't hire a driver or anything so we actually rode back with the photographer. Haha. It took an hour to get back! Yep remember the "should be 5 minute drive in a normal city" thing. Driving in Hawaii 85% of the time sucks!

So we got back to the hotel and then the reception started...
I wanted to post a bunch of other pictures but loading pictures on here sucks and takes forever lately. Everytime I try I get a whole 4 pictures in an hours time. This will never get posted if I keep trying. Now to start the endless hours on the reception details. Enjoy! :)