SMI's reviews

We booked this luau for our rehearsal dinner almost a year in advance. Then they decided to change the luau schedule & cancel Thursday night shows in May. However, they didn't call to tell us or my wedding coordinator. Luckily, Jackie (coordinator) read something about this in a local trade journal and called them ASAP to figure this out. Turns out it was cancelled, and they weren't calling to tell anyone. She was able to get us booked at a different luau, but they had to wait list half my part to start off with. We ended up getting everyone in at the other luau, but it was only because my coordinator was on the ball. This was one of the instances that really proved value to have her on our side.

Instead of just bringing our wedding party to the Rehearsal, we brought all of our guests. They gave us 8 tables in the front of the luau. The food was good (our chance to try poi and kalua pig), and all of the drinks were included in the cost of the luau. Excellent value, and talented Hawaiian dancers/musicians.

Maui Wedding Cakes created our slipper (flip flop) favors. These are cookies hand tipped in either white or dark chocolate, and decorated. They also put raw sugar in the bottom of the small bag so it looks like sand. Very nice favor that was placed at each place setting upon our guests' arrival at the reception. Highly recommend.

This might be my favorite vendor. I am a vegan, so there are very few types of cake I can enjoy without dairy or any animal products. Though JoAnn had not done this before, she was the one vendor that my coordinator found who was willing to do this. The top tier of our cake was a vegan carrot cake that was so tasty, no one even believed it was vegan! The other 3 tiers of our cake were 'normal', and the whole thing was covered in vegan icing. This was so good that no one knew it was vegan. JoAnn also baked several sample vegan cakes and would bring them to my coordinator to make sure she perfected the recipe. Classy move.

JoAnn also went above & beyond by agreeing to recreate a family recipe for English fruit cake, which is traditionally handed out as favors at the end of the wedding. The fruit cake was a perfect replication of my recipe, and the pieces were all very generously sized.

This was the one vendor that we didn't really care for. We hired them for group transportation for all of our guests. Akina Aloha was LATE the day our wedding. We found this even more ridculous because they REQUIRED that we pay them for 15 minutes travel time to and from their parking lot. So instead of showing up at 4:00, when we paid them from 3:45, they arrived at 4:10. I feel like this company was just riping us off. They also tried to charge overtime at the end of the night, but my coordinator stopped that issue ASAP. It was definitely worth it to have Jackie on our side when dealing with this company.

Jamie was our live musician at the church. His voice sounds very much like Jack Johnson live, so we knew we wanted him right away. Great musician and played exactly what we asked him perfectly. His fee was included in the cost of using Keawalai Church.

Dan did a great job of keeping our party going all night. We had a long list of music we wanted played at our reception, and somehow he got it all in. He also met with us before the wedding just to make sure everything was going to go smoothly, as he also served as the MC for the reception.

I also liked that he stayed late when our party wasn't ready to leave at the end of the night. He was there about 45 minutes longer and did not charge us for this. Maybe the tip helped!

We choose to stay at Wailea Beach Villas with our entire group rather than one of the resorts. The thing we liked best was that the rooms where much larger than 2 bedroom suites at the Four Seasons or the Grand Wailea, and had the benefit of a full kitchen in each vacation rental. Plus, they have a wonderful concierge, Tracy Dill, that took care of everything we wanted. He even set up our entire bunch for the day after the ceremony.

Maui didn't have many options for linen rentals, so we went with BBJ. they had lovely white hemstitch linen with chiffon overlays. We also did silver eternity sheer napkins and chair ties. All of their linens were in excellent condition and well worth the money.

Plus, I found out after the wedding that my mother actually look several chair ties as mementos. I was horrified by this and told my coordinator ASAP. However, she told me that BBJ often provides 'extras' with any order, and when she did the final count up of all the linens she still had enough for to return the order in full. How nice that I didn't have to pay for this!

We used Pacific Isle Rentals for our bamboo chivari chairs and our custom lighting at SeaWatch. They were great about providing us with a lot of photos to show what teh different types of lighting looked like. My coordinator told me that the lighting would really transform the space more than anything else. At first I thought she was just trying to sell me something, but the moment I saw the photos I knew what she meant. This was one of the best additions to our reception. Also, this company made pricing very easy. No nickle & diming with added costs. Everything was included.