When Dave and Jenny asked me to film their wed­ding in Maui, there was no way I could say refuse. Soon¹ I found myself in the only place in the world where Koa grows, and every tree I passed made me won­der if it would even­tu­ally be made into a ukulele or gui­tar. I was only there for two days, but it was worth every moment in the delight­ful weather, spend­ing time with some of the nicest peo­ple I’ve ever met.

I learned that there are only twelve let­ters in the Hawaiian alpha­bet (which is why so many of the words look the same to me), and the lan­guage uses Spanish vow­els. Each vowel is usu­ally pro­nounced by itself (Wailea is said “Why-lay-ah”). I was sur­prised to see most signs in both English and Japanese; it turns out there used to be a sig­nif­i­cant Japanese com­mu­nity in Hawaii, although most of the Japanese tourists go to see Pearl Harbor instead.

All the locals are super nice, per­haps due to the fact that tourism is one of the only indus­tries left in Maui²; it seems like most peo­ple liv­ing there are in the ser­vice indus­try in some form or another³.

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1. “Soon” being a rel­a­tive term when com­pared to the lim­it­less of time, as it took me roughly a full day and three planes to get there, from Ottawa to Chicago to Honolulu to Kahalui. [↑]
2. The other being agri­cul­ture that’s mostly been over­shad­owed by com­pe­ti­tion from Philippines. [↑]
3. As opposed to those from Honolulu, who have jobs related to the mil­i­tary in some way. [↑]