Why 5 stars? Because we had the perfect wedding…read more --- --- --- Diana did a phenomenal job with everything - I cannot recommend enough for you to use her, if you're planning on getting married in Oahu. My now-wife handled the majority of the communication with Diana, but she was very on top of all the communication. Everything was executed flawlessly, and with thorough explanation. We ended up choosing Kualoa Ranch, which was one of the places Diana recommended. This is another story for another review, but I highly recommend that venue! Despite all of the moving parts, and the destination wedding of 24 people who traveled into town for it, there was no stone left un-turned. Every detail was taken care of, and because of this, Diana allowed us to enjoy our once-in-a-lifetime experience without a stress or care in the world.

I used Martina Cacciaroni and Oahu Wedding Company for my wedding in May of 2009, to cut straight…read moreto the point...DO NOT USE HER! My story is long but I'm going to cover the relevant topics. I meet her and some other colleagues a year and a half before my wedding date. She's very personable and her website is great but this reflects nothing to her knowledge of wedding planning abilities. She's a great person and is very sweet but bottom line is she has not clue about what it takes to plan a wedding. I'd give her organizational skills a D-. I was so furious after my wedding that when I came home I did some research on her to find out that she was in college while she was helping me plan my wedding. Which means she's a part time coordinator and explains why she wasn't fully tracking with me. I found her myspace, facebook and some references on her college website that helped me to determine that she was a full time student during my year and a half of planning and that she graduated the same month that I had my wedding. There were so many details that we had discussed that she did not do at my wedding. I'm not sure if she thought I wouldn't of noticed or if she just solely forgot. Every vendor she recommended me to was horrible to work with. The day of the wedding she showed up with basically a bunch of friends (all about 25 yrs old or so) and they were her setup and break down crew. They didn't do a mic check before the wedding and the pastor couldn't even say my name right (which she was suppose to go over with him). It seemed like a bunch of college kids who go to college in Hawaii and decided that they're going to do a wedding planning company for people who do destination weddings. After all, how hard can it be right? I imagine that your able to get away with it so long as the party doesn't exceed 30 people but after that the flaws truly start to come out. Supposedly when I met her a year and a half before my wedding day there was another older lady who was suppose to be mentoring her but for unknown reasons the lady left. Martina is the only wedding planner I believe and there's another guy his name is Nathan Bingham or something similar, but he's just the boyfriend now turned fiance. I did some research on him and it looks like he runs some type of moped rental company on the island as well so they might just be in the business to make money but I assure you that she/they have no idea what they are doing. Even more fishy...when I paid my balance I got an emailed receipt that said it was from Oahu Wedding but the email address wasnathan@hawaiianstylerentals.com I checked that website Hawaiian Style Rentals - Honolulu's Moped, Motorcycle and Bicycle Rentals Specialists on Oahu, Hawaii. and sure enough it looks like the payment system is tied to his business. It doesn't pay to try and scam people especially with the world wide web. I read she got into a college in some state on the east coast so I'm sure she'll just move her business over there or still continue to give the illusion that she can operate out of Hawaii since she still has friend there. Whatever it is...I believe it will all come back to you eventually. I wasn't going to post my review of her initially after my wedding because I thought it would be spitefully of me to do that but if I can save just one person from telling my story than that's one person that can go on and have the wedding of her dreams since it's too late for me. Your wedding day is only one day in a lifetime...don't gamble with someone your unsure about. I say to find someone who you can get good raves on from people who are neutral and have nothing to gain or lose from telling you their personal experience.

I don't like writing negative reviews, but unfortunately I wasn't happy with Lorraine as a day of…read morewedding planner. I was busy finishing up school before the wedding, but many of the things that didn't go to plan on the wedding day were not due to this. Lorraine was meant to have two staff assist her on the day of the wedding, but they "cancelled" on the day. Lorraine had lost her voice from being sick, so having helpers was definitely needed on the day. Not to mention we had 200 guests. Our wedding singer tried to leave at 4:30pm, but I had hired him until 5:45pm. He said that he told Lorraine that he had to leave early. This was never communicated to me before the wedding. When I saw the musician packing up, I asked Lorraine if he was leaving, and she said "yes, you only paid for partial service". I had to go speak to the musician myself to explain that we had paid him until 5:45pm. Fortunately he stayed. During the ceremony the groom and groomsman were asked by Lorraine to stand in the kitchen area. This was never a part of the plan for the wedding and the bridal party almost got to the wedding ceremony site before the groom/groomsman. Our wedding cake was an ice cream cake, which I had to personally pick up after 1 hour off the table and take it to the freezer because it was melting and hadn't been looked after. This is something one of her hired helpers could have been there to help with. During the night I asked Lorraine if we could turn off the fluorescent lights in the wedding hall because I had purchased candles and lots of string lights to light up the venue. She just looked at me, and the situation wasn't fixed. The line for dinner was incredibly long and moved very slowly. This is probably because we only had one line for the food instead of two (a line on each side of the table). I feel like an experienced wedding planner would have known to organize two lines. I do appreciate many of the things Lorraine did help me with on the day of the wedding. She printed and laminated our wedding vows, helped light candles, check guests in, helped with the clean up and drove leftover food home for us. She also helped me with the wedding time line. I just expected a lot more from a day of coordinator and I wouldn't recommend her services.

Lorraine was my wedding coordinator for my wedding back in August of 2018. She did such an amazing…read morejob coordinating and planning my wedding. Being that I'm from a different state and not physically being there was really tough for me. But Lorraine made it all possible. My husband and I were really happy with her service. She'll go above and beyond for her clients. I would definitely recommend her to our friends and family.

Aloha Wedding Creative plans and officiates traditional and same-sex weddings in Honolulu, HI.read more

Our wedding was in June and Adam was very nice, he has a great voice and this put me at ease before…read morethe big day. However we just watched the video from the wedding reception and we were not pleased. 1) He pronounced so many of my family members and friends names wrong (80%) including my own name. It did not appear he practiced any of the script or even went over it ahead of time. When he announces my dad to come out for the father daughter dance he says my last name wrong. If you are charging $1000 to DJ a wedding you should take the time to at least learn how to pronounce the brides name correctly. 2) Another small complaint our videographer noticed was that he called the bouquet toss the bridal toss, it is in our video and I agree it is kind of funny. Luckily nobody tossed me! : ) 3) I had a surprise dance planned for my husband we had sent the music instructing him to fade and change the song when I came on but he never did the dancer who went before me had to tell him to. He did a ok job but not a professional wedding DJ job. I noticed the mess up on my dance song on my wedding night, which totally threw me off as I had practiced with the song I choose. I didn't want to write a bad review but when I just saw the wedding video I felt a duty to give feedback. I would recommend Adam having me fill out the script for the wedding before he met with me so I could have helped him with pronunciation of names instead he focused more on learning my music style and had me fill out a worksheet for that. I wish I would have had my friend DJ and MC instead of hiring a "professional". When it is your wedding reception you will let everything go so it won't matter but if you see the video later you will want to see that the time was taken on your special day. On a positive note I did give him two stars because the music was good. RESPONSE to REPLY: I was not given the MC script to fill out until less than a week before my wedding. It would have been helpful to have known that you needed the script 2 weeks before the wedding. I met with DJ Adam on the 31st my wedding was on the 12th. In reviewing email and texts I think you may have relied on the wedding planner and assumed I had been given information that I had not. Probably better for you to let clients know what you need directly and when. Thanks for taking this feedback to heart, I wish you have even more success in 2017.

I recommend this company to anyone looking for a wedding DJ in Honolulu. Great experience hiring…read morethem for my sister in law's wedding, they are reliable, professional and easy to work with. The guests complimented on how good the music was, and had a great time dancing! Thanks Honolulu DJ Company!!

Reverend David and Karen helped to put together the perfect simple ceremony we were looking for!…read more We loved the readings that Reverend David did and the blessing, and Karen's kind guidance to remember that it's about us. They were kind, sweet, helpful, considerate, professional, and had great energy, and we are so thankful for their assistance and presence! I would highly recommend Hawaiian Creative Weddings to anyone looking to get married on island.

We had Mr. David Tasaka officiate our wedding this past February. We did not have any rehearsal but…read moreit was ok as he guided us. He was the highlight of our ceremony I must say. His words were so touching and our wedding vows that he wrote was beautiful. Also his voice was very calming and soothing. Thank you so much Mr. Tasaka! So glad you were our officiant.

Pains me to do this because the owner seems like a very nice person. My fiancé and I found her…read morecompany through google. We were looking for companies that were able to offer small wedding ceremony packages. We also wanted to find someone that can help us arrange a small casual reception afterwards, which many companies who specialize in wedding ceremony packages didn't do. So when we found this company, we decided to contact them and see what they can offer. We were initially very excited to learn that this company was able to help us with the reception portion. The owner also seemed very enthusiastic and experienced in the industry. Even though we were envisioning a much smaller and less expensive wedding, the owner managed to convince us to have a bigger and more lavish wedding than we anticipated, because she convinced us that she could "give us our dream wedding" within our limited budget. Slightly skeptical, we asked her if she could give us a predicted budget breakdown to see how she will pull off our wedding within our budget. However, our first mistake was to sign a contract with her before she gave us this budget prediction, because she kept avoiding and delaying to give us this budget breakdown. This went on for months and she kept giving us excuses and avoiding the budget topic whenever we bring it up. If a planner can't even get it together long enough to put together a quote, how is she expected to plan a wedding? Another thing we found odd was that she asked us to give ALL of our wedding money to her so that she can "take care of the payments from her end". Not once have I met a planner that does this. Our second mistake was to follow her venue recommendation, even though we know that this venue is slightly more on the expensive side, not realizing that this will blow our budget. After the venue was booked, that's when everything went downhill, as it turns out that we had to increase our overall wedding budget by 20+% due to many things we weren't made aware of. She also told us all of the sudden that her service fees have not been included in our budget. Shocked and anxious, we asked her how much her service is, because we didn't see any specific number for her fees on her contract. And of course, like the budget, she avoided answering our question about her service fees. By not being upfront about their service fees just shows how unethical their business practice is. Nonetheless, communication with her was a nightmare. As a bride, of course I would have a myriad of questions for her, especially about cost, vendors, and scheduling vendor meetings. 9/10 times none of my emails or texts were answered for weeks at a time. And whenever she reappears again out of the blue, she would never answer any of my questions. Instead she would have some ridiculous excuse on why she ghosted on us and say "I have a lot of information for you. Let's meet up in person next week to discuss". But why are you asking a meeting in person during a pandemic? She would disappear for such long periods of time for various excuses that we had to take initiative and do the majority of the planning process ourselves, which defeats the purpose of having a wedding coordinator in the first place. If you're too busy, at least have the courtesy to let us know rather than ghosting your client. So with all of the drama and frustration that we had to go through in the 4 months working with her, we decided to terminate our contract with her. Take note that we have sent her multiple emails explaining our frustrations with her over the course of two months. But of course, she didn't answer or respond to any of my emails or address any of my concerns or frustrations. When we decided to fire her, we sent her a very long email detailing everything that was frustrating us, from the budget management to her poor communication. And her response? She didn't even apologize or acknowledge any of her mistakes and said something like "Since your wedding is still really far away, I need to work on weddings that would bring me income right now. I have worked very hard on your wedding for the short amount of time we've been working together...". Take note that at this point the only thing she has done for us is booking the venue. And how rude can you be by telling us we're just another unimportant source of income? I'm writing this review on Yelp because she only has very biased reviews on her website and nowhere else. Skip the headache and go with other companies if you don't want to go through the same thing that I did. TL;DR: claims she's experienced and organized but the complete opposite, VERY slow to no communication, mysterious service fee (read: shady business practices), didn't honor our budget, won't apologize or acknowledge mistakes, an expert at excuses & avoiding our questions

Wanted to let Kelli know that she did an awesome job putting out wedding together. She took care of…read moreeverything from helping me with my dress, organizing, decorating, ordering, picking up, caterers and photographer. It was an amazing and beautiful wedding on the beach with an awesome reception to follow. Food was delicious. Due to Covid, it was just immediate family and every comment was about how amazingly beautiful it was. Kelli was very helpful, patient and full of wonderful ideas. We're glad we found her and Pastor Mark. Would definitely recommend Tide the Knot.

Working with Merrissa was one of the very best decisions we made for our destination wedding in…read moreHawaii. We had an intimate group of about 40 of our closest family and friends--teens through seniors--so it was incredibly important to us that the day felt personal, warm, and unforgettable. From the start, Merrissa understood our vision: a gorgeous oceanfront ceremony followed by an amazing, intimate dinner party as our reception, with food people would rave about for years and the beauty of Oahu as the backdrop. Merrissa went above and beyond in every possible way--thoughtful, incredibly intuitive, and always advocating for the ideas she knew we'd love (and she was always right). Her recommendations were spot on, her island connections were phenomenal, and she kept us perfectly aligned with our budget without ever sacrificing the magic we hoped for. She was a dream to work with: super responsive, endlessly kind, and armed with a wonderful sense of humor that made the planning process genuinely enjoyable. Our guests couldn't stop talking about how incredible she was throughout the celebration. I truly feel our wedding was perfect--literally not a single thing went off plan--and so much of that is thanks to Merrissa's talent, care, and professionalism. She's not just an exceptional planner, but a truly lovely human being. I'm honestly sad the wedding is over because I wish we were still working with her. If you're considering a planner, you could not be in better hands.

My husband and I had the honor of planning our destination wedding at Turtle Bay Resort with…read moreHonolulu-based Make it Memorable Wedding Planning & Events' founder, Merrissa Uchiyama. Our wedding planning from a distance and coordinating with local Oahu vendors went very smoothly and stress-free thanks to Merrissa's expertise, deep Oahu connections, and professional service! Planning a destination wedding in Hawaii from California at first was stressful because some of the vendors did not respond right away, and my husband and I had to follow up multiple times on some occasions to have our questions answered. However Merrissa took that burden off our shoulders by coordinating and communicating with vendors. When things became overwhelming, Merrissa did a great job of pep-talking and keeping us calm. Merrissa helped us plan and coordinate the following vendors: -Hotel venue, food, and catering -Flowers -Photographer -Live band for music -Decorations and lighting If you're looking for a professional, friendly, and responsive wedding planner in Oahu whether you are a local kama'aina in Oahu or afar planning your destination wedding, I highly recommend working with Merrissa and her team at Make it Memorable Wedding Planning & Events.

We were looking for a simple, stress-free marriage ceremony. Karen and Rev. Tasaka delivered…read moreperfectly. Our ceremony took place at Papa'iloa beach in the morning. We ordered the package that included a musician who sang and played guitar, photographer, and officiant which was a terrific value. Any questions and requests we had after booking were quickly answered and accomodated. The music by Eddie was beautiful and perfect. The photographer, Slave, took many beautiful shots and made it fun. They even gave us all the shots on a thumb drive right after the ceremony so we could do what we wanted with them instead of having to pick which ones we wanted. Rev. David Tasaka performed a beautiful ceremony and was so photogenic we can't help but smile when we see the shots that include him. We did not have a rehearsal nor was one needed. When we arrived at the beach early they were all already there and had chosen the perfect spot for us but you can always choose your own as well. Rev. Tasaka explained the ceremony and Slave took photos before, during, and after the ceremony while Eddie played music throughout. We highly recommend Hawaiian Creative Gay Weddings; stop searching and contact them, you won't be disappointed!