Sun 'n Saks: Work Before Play

After a super smooth flight where we were fed the greasiest "frittata" I've ever seen, we landed in Honolulu on Monday afternoon.

(source) Oh, school lunch, you have returned to haunt me!

Just one couple, a few bags, a wedding dress, kimono and suit.

My brother, who was already in Hawaii on a mission trip, greeted us with leis and hugs, and Sak's parents soon came by with their rental car to pick us up.
Though I came prepared with a huge "to do" list that needed accomplishing as soon as possible - I will tell you this: it is really hard to land in beautiful Hawaii and NOT go into complete vacation-mode. My brain turned into relaxed mush, and I had a hard time caring about anything other than warm sun and how soon I could get to the beach.
Sak's family, being practical residents no longer "moved" by the island, kept me on track. We picked up all the things we had shipped beforehand (took two trips!), made a quick trip to Wal-Mart for me to complete my pre-wedding shopping list (more on the perils of that, later), and sorted out the complicated multi-reservations we had made at the Aqua Waikiki Pearl Hotel.
My goal was simple - get everything ready to go before the end of the day. That way I could give everything to our wonderful coordinator/decorator and be able to spend the rest of the week at the beach, chillin' with my guests.

To start, Sak and his mom worked on building origami boxes to hold extra button-pins.Here are the directions if you want to make some!
I would have helped, of course, but I was busy demolishing one of my favorite island snacks:Yum.

Anyway, I also added a simple touch to the bouquet vases we bought. The mini sewing kit and small ribbons I brought with me really came in handy!
We took a break after to get some dinner - Sak and I had a giant bowl of bibimbap from Yummy's.
And then it was right back to business. I attached escort card bookmarks to a giant science-fair-esque cardboard stand using our buttons:
We had to deal with several last minute guest-list changes, so be prepared! Luckily, I had enough "spare" escort and place cards to deal with most of the changes. I also wanted to use corkboard painted red - but we did not have time to find a corkboard big enough (much less time to paint), and you can hardly see the board under the bookmarks anyway.

Sak sorted each table's decorations in separate bags, and labeled it for (hopefully) easy identification.
It doesn't seem like much work in retrospect - but it wasn't so simple and the guest name/table matching took longer than I expected. We stayed up late into the AMs that night trying to finish everything, which made for a very grumpy Penga and Sak. There was also a very grumpy Sak-brother, who couldn't sleep due to our project-building in his sleeping spot. No one was happy.

But! We finished, and slept as much as we could to get ready for the last day of pre-wedding work. The beach would just have to wait.