“Do not take any photos of me crying… because I will cry. But you can’t take any of that”… is what Eric said to me when I met up with him and Jaclyn in Maui the day before their wedding. I replied simply that I couldn’t make any promises and that the only promise I would make was not to make Jaclyn or Eric look bad on their wedding day. I think I managed to keep that promise!

Jaclyn will forever have a special place in my heart. She was one of the first people I met and befriended while attending naturopathic medical school and has remained a steadfast and loyal friend ever since. We went through a lot together, laughed a lot, played volleyball a lot and had many memorable conversations through the years.

As a couple, Jaclyn and Eric also hold a special place in my heart. Early on in my photographic career, I knew I wanted to break into the wedding photography scene but I needed a couple to take a chance and let me capture their precious moments. Jaclyn & Eric was that couple! My very first engagement session was with these two and it couldn’t have been a better time.

Over a year later, I was thrilled to be present at Jaclyn & Eric’s wedding in Maui, documenting a precious moment in their journey together in life.

Jaclyn & Eric: Thank you so much for allowing me to capture your perfect day and thank you for your phenomenal friendship.

So much love, Jenne.

Jaclyn’s hair was done so beautifully and the orchids were such a nice touch!

A girl’s gotta have her MAC make-up!

This is sooo Jaclyn… she’s such a meticulous girl with a lot of attention to detail, so it didn’t surprise me that she had a list for applying her make-up (which by the way, was done quite fabulously!)

This is Jaclyn’s happy dance… she was quite happy!

What bride doesn’t want to get that extra bit of toning before her big walk down the aisle?! We were joking around about that and then she actually went ahead and did some dips!

The Plantation House Restaurant in Kapalua was an amazing venue and Jessica, the event coordinator, was fantastic. Anyone wanting to get married in Maui, I would highly recommend looking this place up.

Eric’s first look at Jaclyn!

I told Eric that I couldn’t promise that I wouldn’t take this photo!

The ceremony was beautiful… Jaclyn’s Nanna was the speaker for the wedding and did such a wonderful job.

Quite possibly one of my favourite photos from the day.

D.T. Fleming Beach in Kapalua was the perfect spot to take photos for Jaclyn and Eric. They got the beach and the ocean as well as rocky outcroppings.

So they decided to place leis in the ocean so they would be carried away… except that the leis kept coming back with the waves! So after two tries… they then decided….

… to throw them into the ocean!

Classic Jaclyn, and yet another of my favs!

Just a stunning couple!

I really, really loved Jaclyn’s bouquet.

For more photos from Jaclyn & Eric’s wedding day, CLICK HERE for a slideshow!

Graham and I certainly saved the best for last. We decided on our last two days to tour around the island by car… and by air in a helicopter!

By car, we toured the east end of Maui along the south and north shore and saw some spectacular sights! Beds of hardened, black lava fields met the amazingly blue waters of the Pacific… it was fantastic! We zipped around the island in our trusty yellow Jeep 4×4 driving single lane highways with hairpin turns and scenic coastal roads where, if the driver wasn’t paying close attention and the tires left the road, you could careen over the edge and plunge straight down into the ocean below. But nevermind that, if the driver wasn’t steady around the corners, rolling waves of nausea would hit real hard and threaten to upchuck yesterday’s dinner.

On the winding road to Hana, there were fresh water pools by waterfalls by the sides of the road where you could get out and take a dip in the hot sun… I have to say, there is very little that is more satisfying than taking a cool dip in a fresh water pool by a waterfall on a humid day.

By helicopter, we got to see the entire island from the air. We really did save the best for last. Both Graham and I had never been up in a helicopter before so this was an extra-special treat for the both of us! We both captured some spectacular images from both land and air and I’m so happy I get to share this all for everyone to see!

Thanks for following our Maui island adventure (you can find the first parts of the series here (Part One) and here (Part Two)!) and stay tuned for Jaclyn & Eric’s Maui wedding post!

Mahalo and aloha!

There’s our trusty Jeep 4×4! It was pretty kick-ass bootin’ around Maui in a Jeep!

To get a feel for scale in this photo… that bridge down there is a two-laner, so try to imagine a car on it and get a feel for how humongous this gorge is.

I didn’t know what these were until the helicopter pilot mentioned them on our aerial tour… they’re rainbow eucalyptus trees!

This was the black sand beach in Waianapanapa State Park right outside of Hana.

Graham really liked the look of these rock walls along many properties all around Maui

Yup, that’s our chopper touching down to pick us up for our aerial tour!

Can you spot our shadow?

See the winding road below?! That’s part of the Road to Hana!

We didn’t get to swim in that one but there was a mini version that we did swim in… oh so very nice!

Do you see that coastal plunge?!? More of the Road to Hana!

That’s “Jurassic” island… remember the opening scene in Jurassic Park where the helicopter is flying towards an island rainforest type dealio? That’s the island that they flew by!

Pineapple fields! I have to say, pineapple is good on Maui.

This is Graham’s shot of me taking of shot of…

…this!

That’s our chopper!

We had some pretty good food while on Maui… Aloha Mixed Plate was no exception… great local food, so yummy!

This is a continuation of a series of posts! If you’d like to see the first installment, you can see it HERE!

Since it was a six hour difference between Toronto and Hawaii, Graham and I decided to try and stick to Toronto time as closely as possible so we wouldn’t have the crazy effects of jet-lag when we returned from our tropical paradise. That meant that we would wake up around 5-6 am (to be reasonable… really, we’d have to get up at something like 2-3 am to be exactly on Toronto time… wasn’t happening!) every day and be asleep by about 9 pm. This actually worked out really well for us given that we aren’t really night-life peeps anyways and there wasn’t a heck of a lot to do at night around our hotel… AND we got so much more out of our days getting up that much earlier.

The one morning we got up suuuuper early was the day following our arrival where we decided to check out sunrise (yep… sun-RISE) at the top of Haleakala Crater. Haleakala is a dormant volcano which makes up the eastern side of Maui and literally means “house of the sun”. It’s approximately two billion years old with the last eruption occuring about 250 years ago. We decided to go check out the brilliant sunrises that all the tour books were raving about.

We left the hotel around 3 am (estimated driving time was 2.5 hours) and sunrise was at 6 am so we took the winding narrow roads up the side of the mountain thinking that we would be one of the first ones up at the summit of the crater… the parking lot was full (we had to make our own spot!). We were definitely NOT the first people up there… there must have been twenty to thirty cars in the summit parking lot and about the same amount in the observation area lot further down.

This view was most certainly worth the lack of sleep and the winding drive up the mountain. Being above the clouds at 10,000 feet at sunrise was something spectacular! Absolutely breathtaking! I’m not sure our images do it justice but this trip up was definitely a highlight.

Just a note, all of the images from this trip are interspersed with ones that I took and ones that Graham took… so I can’t take all the credit for the some of the awesome photos!

Yup, they’re wearing jogging pants and toques! It was actually quite cold and windy at the summit of Haleakala. Probably somewhere in the vicinity of 5-7 degrees Celsius. The temperature down near sea level was probably something like 15-20 degrees that morning. Crazy train.

The sun was just starting to come up over the horizon… I have to say, it warmed up significantly when the sun came out to play!

Everyone was wearing winter jackets and bundled up with towels and blankets!

Graham took this shot of the Haleakala Observatories. The University of Hawaii and the US Department of Defense have observatories and satellite monitoring systems located at the top of this mountain. Looked very, very cool at sunrise.

The visitors centre as seen from the summit of the crater.

That parking lot was pretty full prior to sunrise… remember the whole, “we thought we were the first ones up the mountain”?

One of my favourite images from this trip… you can actually take hikes into the crater and while Graham and I were not up for it, clearly other people were! I just love the textures and colours in this image… and with the two hikers, you get a nice sense of scale.

Still above the clouds on our way back down the mountain… this is in the general direction of where we were staying on the west side of Maui.

Stay tuned for the next installment to come shortly! Aloha!

I am finally getting around to blogging our awesome trip to Maui because I know so many of you out there have been waiting with bated breath! Graham and I had an amazing time on this vacation and we likely wouldn’t have had this opportunity if it wasn’t for Jaclyn and Eric’s destination wedding in Maui (photographs to follow, I promise!).

I have to say though, it was a little hectic when we got off the plane in Kahului because our baggage wasn’t coming off the plane and we had to go pick up our rental car and the temperature difference… whoa! Hot and humid! It was definitely nice compared to Torontonian weather but when you’re running around trying to get things done… oof, a little overwhelming. But… when in Rome… so we settled in pretty quickly to the Hawai’ian rhythm, took a breather and seriously from that point forward, things just worked out. I think I can say that was the theme for this vacation… we just went with the flow and things worked out beautifully! Aloha!

This was taken by Graham on our drive up the west coast of the island to our hotel… It was a nice long stretch of road with no one on it but us!… and the bright yellow fire hydrant in the middle of nowhere!

This was our hotel room… we stayed at the Aston Mahana in Ka’anapali where all of the rooms face the ocean front and the one side of the room is all window from floor to ceiling! A girl could really get used to falling asleep to the sound of crashing waves!

Sunset from our lanai (balcony)… fantabulous!

Our first dip in the salty Pacific… well, for our feet anyway…

This actually ties in with the next series which will be posted shortly… this photo was taken at three in the morning on our way out to Haleakala Crater. We were driving along the highway and passed a sign that warned of a controlled burning area and then rounded the corner to see humongous flames in the sugarcane field next to the side of the highway! Smoke was just billowing across the road… you could barely see in front of you because it was so thick, and the flames were crazy high… check out the car in the photo below for a sense of scale! So as we like to do, we got out and took some photos on the side of the highway in the dark of the night… yup, crazy photographers.

Stay tuned for the next segment of our trip… the Haleakala Crater!

Much love, Jenne.

Well well, Internet… just got back from shooting a wedding in Maui! Let’s just say, Graham and I had a blast and can’t wait to show all the photos from the trip, wedding and all! I will have a full post on Jaclyn and Eric’s wedding as well as tons of photos from the adventuring around one of Hawai’i’s most gorgeous islands!

In the mean time, here’s a little teaser that I just couldn’t resist!

J.