Aloha Bridal Connections — Attraction in Honolulu

Before we started, I had no idea what went into a wedding. I mean, I thought I did, what with the vendors and the ceremony and the reception … and basically that it all had to be everything my then fiancee wanted it to be. What I really had no idea about was all the work and thought that goes into making EVERY DECISION. The amount of detail and knowledge required to get anything done was so enormous, my wife and I often found ourselves overwhelmed with the wedding planning process.

Enter Lauren Ellis and Aloha Bridal Connections. We got a Custom Plan which was an additional month of wedding planning and the Day-Of Coordination Package. Now, before I continue with our interaction, I would have to summarize Lauren and her crew in two words. Perfect balance … in just about everything. I’ll explain.

The additional month of wedding planning was for my wife and I to figure our lives out and make decisions. I think that a lot of brides get hung up, not because the process is so detailed oriented, but because they don’t know if the decision they’re making is a good one. They can’t rely on us, the grooms, because our first answer is usually, “whatever you want,” which translates into “I don’t really care, so you pick,” even though that’s not what we mean … usually. Obviously, this doesn’t go over very well. Then, when grooms finally make a decision, brides think their grooms are just saying an answer to say an answer. Sometimes this is true, sometimes it’s not, but I digress … In any case, Lauren was awesome because she would let my wife know that her decision or choice was, indeed, a good one or a bad one. And she did so perfectly. She knew exactly how to criticize an idea that wouldn’t have worked and then tweak it in a way that would make it appealing to my wife. She was also great at working hard to make sure the awesome ideas my wife had were executed perfectly. Lauren came with us to our vendor meetings and made us sit down and make decisions about things in 15 minutes that would’ve taken us a week to do if we were by ourselves. She also went shopping with us to help us get items for our wedding. She made a lot of great suggestions for centerpieces and decor. The best part had to be our homework. Lauren gave us tasks to complete like find a particular item at a store or make a slideshow of the flowers we liked online … stuff like that to help us make decisions quickly and make us feel like we were doing something towards the wedding. It feels nice to cross things off-lists and get things done.

Our wedding was conveniently sandwiched between two hurricanes, and we had to, at the last minute, come up with contingency plans. Lauren helped us keep our cool or coordinate with our venue to make alternative arrangements. Fortunately, we didn’t have to change anything, but having Lauren there to bounce off ideas was very comforting. I’m pretty sure Lauren chased the hurricanes away. Anyway, she was a perfect balance of getting things done and not letting us panic.

On the day of the wedding, Lauren’s assistants were incredibly helpful. I was actually stressing out a little over the time, but the assistants did a great job of letting me know we were perfectly on schedule and calming me down. What’s more, my groomsmen and I had a great time hanging out with them. They were a perfect balance of professional and casual.

Zero hiccups during our wedding. Nothing that stressed us out. A wonderful evening to be had by all. Now, all I need is a time machine to go back and go to my own wedding and enjoy it as a guest. Lauren assures me, she’s working on it.

I highly recommend that you book Aloha Bridal Connections to make sure your night is unforgettable and enjoyable -- a...

TL; DR: ABC was a wonderful choice. Thoroughly professional, our only regret is we didn't buy more planning. They will make your wedding perfect. Some background: My wife plans events professionally, and my mother is a professional event planner. We thought "how hard could a wedding in Kauai be?". Unfortunately, our venue required an event planner, so we chose ABC based on great reviews and good price, especially for the option we chose which was the day of coordination + the few weeks before hand. This package meant that ABC was hands off until a few weeks before the wedding, however ABC went above and beyond the agreement making sure everything was okay through the various stages of COVID restrictions and rescheduling.

What we didn’t know: planning in Hawaii is HARD! The cultural differences, the way business is done, the communication style all make planning very stressful. Many vendors refuse to sign contracts, just working on trust. Tons of top notch vendors don’t even have websites! You just have to know about them, and these are all the cheapest, high quality ones that won’t rip you off just because you have a wedding. We even have significant amounts of family on the islands that were helping us out and we still just barely got the whole thing planned.

If you think like we did and say “how hard could planning a remote wedding be?” please reconsider! The amount of stress relief when ABC finally stepped in and took over all communications with our vendors was immeasurable, sometimes driving out to talk to them because that’s how business is done on the islands. I almost broke into tears, I could finally sleep well again, completely priceless. We had Julie as our main point of contact and she is such a breath of fresh air, absolutely amazing and professional, watching her work was like watching a master painter. I thought we were organized but she takes it to another level. She though of a lot of things we had not, and took care of it all extremely cheaply “what are you gonna cut the cake with? What about the trash removal throughout?” etc… Every one of the things Julie changed about our ceremony, décor, timeline, etc... was dead on the money the right call. Then it got to the wedding weekend, she held our hand as it looked like the event was about to be cancelled by new restrictions, and made sure we were in the loop despite things being out of our hands. She bent over backwards to make it to the rehearsal, and it was incredible how much knowledge and experience she had. Julie shepherded all the vendors to make sure things went well with setup, then walked us through the rehearsal. I’ve been in weddings before, my mom has been in countless, as have a bunch of the party, we were all very impressed with Julie’s work. She predicted so many things that could happen and planned us for it “the bride and groom might get too excited and forget to collect their bouquet back, if that happens MOH just do this…” etc… She taught us really cute things that looked great on the recap. Throughout the day of she and her cohorts checked in on us, calmed us down, and went above the call of duty. She showed up with food out of nowhere, made sure we knew what was going on, and kept the entire night to minute precision while accommodating for our last minute wishes. She literally sewed my wife in her dress minutes before the ceremony.

I cannot overstate how perfect ABC was, and how much I wish Julie just had taken care of the whole thing. I know she would’ve done an amazing job while accommodating all our preferences and dreams. We probably would’ve ended up saving money because she knows so many vendors personally. We are forever a fan of...

I wanted to like Abc as they had flawless reviews. I was really looking forward to working with them, however my experience was unfortunately extremely disappointing and negative. Perhaps there was a time when Abc provided excellent service and now they have taken on too many clients with too little staff and the quality of service has suffered as a result.

My biggest issue with ABC was communication. They were impossible to get in touch with without a prescheduled apt, which were typically booked out for weeks. I was told I had unlimited consultations and communication with the ABC team including planning, advise, and feedback. This was not the case. They were consistently unresponsive via email and there was no working phone number to call. This did not give me much confidence in the people who I would essentially be putting all of my trust into on my wedding day. I mentioned this frustration to them and they apologized and then continued to be unreliable and let emails sit for days and weeks at a time without any kind of follow up or acknowledgment. On top of tracking down and following up with all of my vendors I had to continuously follow up with my coordinators as well. Ultimately communication with ABC created more work for me when their job was to make the process easier.

The first red flag was my deep dive call with ABC. I scheduled this call 2 weeks in advance and was waiting on this touch base to start a lot of my planning. At 5 minutes past our appointment time I followed up to be sure the meeting was still happening. I revived an email following up with me saying I declined the meeting and to reschedule. I found this really unprofessional and odd especially since I did not cancel the meeting. They apologized, and we rescheduled for the next day and I dismissed it as system glitch.

The second issue I had was ABC giving unsound advice on timelines. I was told to book certain vendors at approximate month ranges based on my wedding date. I went to book my vendors 5 months earlier than their recommended timelines and half of the vendors were already booked and unavailable for my date. While I realize ABC has no control over specific vendors, their recommendation was just so far off. Had I had waiting until their recommended timeline of booking I would have been left with a wedding with no vendors. I reached out to ABC for additional recommendations so I could book the core vendors ASAP. They eventually got around to replying and gave me a general list as if someone just googled it quickly. It did not seem as though this list was curated for my specific wedding. One of the vendors had several terrible reviews about being unreliable and dirty. I couldn’t believe a team whom I was paying for recommendations would advise to use such an clearly low quality and problematic vendor.

I continued to grow frustrated with the quality service I was getting from ABC. After all of these frustrations were communicated to ABC I was given a redundant questionnaire to fill out. At that point all I wanted were simple, specific, and time sensitive questions answered regarding my vendors. The majority of the questions on this questionnaire were things I’ve already booked and decided on months ago, or that I have previously discussed in detail on my deep dive call with ABC. Had anyone actually looked at the notes from my call or my folder of vendor contracts and mood boards, they would have known this.

If you want coordinators that will actually listen to you and treat you as an individual client and give you catered recommendations and quality service, do not choose abc. They will give you a million excuses if you have an issue and even blame you for...