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hwnmusiclives
`Olu`olu
USA
580 Posts |
 Posted - 06/18/2011 : 04:45:31 AM
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It has been a rough few months in anticipation of my wedding at Hānaiakamālama, the summer home of Alexander 'Iolani Liholiho Keawenui (Kamehameha IV) and his Queen Consort, Emma. Although annnounced more than 14 months ago and with planning beginning shortly thereafter, everything about this wedding has been a trial of immense proportions. As a man of deep and abiding faith, I have had to question so many things. Does God not want me to be married again? Or does God simply not want me to be married in Hawai'i, a place I think of as "home?" So this past year has been a test of my patience, my love, my commitment, my faith, my relationship with my own fiancee, and most recently, my health.
The trials began when my fiancee Cherylann needed two surgeries in the same year for the same condition. I did not know if she would ever be whole of health again, and I was devastated at the thought of starting out our marriage as anything less than perfect. More than this, between her illness and her work on her doctoral dissertation, I may be the first groom in history who practically single-handedly plannned in his own wedding.
About 6 weeks before the wedding, my photographer - a great personal friend who had committed to shoot my wedding over a year ago - cancelled. He did not have another commitment. He simply stated that he "sucks at shooting weddings." Yet on his Facebook wall last week, his status read, "Off to Hilo to shoot another beautiful wedding." My heart was broken.
At about 4 weeks before the wedding, I still hadn't received a contract from my caterer. After asking around among friends, the word on the street was that I "chose poorly" since the restaurant doesn't actually "cater" - which means that they do not deliver the food, set-up or display the food, or serve the food. Who is supposed to do that? The bride's mom?
At about 25 days before the wedding, none of at least 15 different florists had returned our calls or e-mails. You would think they didn't wan't the business.
At about 20 days before the wedding, I learned that if we have more than 50 guests at the palace, we need to hire a valet parking attendant. I also learned that we needed to rent tables and chairs. How I overlooked this earlier I have no idea. So the cost estimates began for valets and table/chair rentals.
At about 15 days before the wedding, we had almost no affirmative RSVP's. I started asking around to see if locals were angry at me or if there was some other unforeseen issue. As it turns out, there was not a single unforeseen issue, but several. My guest list was comprised primarily of local musicians and the hula community. On the day of my wedding, there are so many conflicts with the local arts commmunity that I believe I may have lost track of some of them by now. King Kamehameha Hula Festival. Kaumakapili Church Commemoration. Graduation parties. And, most recently, the memorial service for the recently passed 'Ihilani Miller. (You know 'Ihilani Miller - composer of "Kuhio Beach" and "Pakalana" and longtime member of numerous Hawaiian "girl groups" having worked with Lei Cypriano, Linda DelaCruz, and Mona and Ethylynne Teves.) So all of my musician friends are committed to these other events. (As a side note, I almost lost our officiant, as well, since he is the kahu of Kaumakapili Church. Fortunately, our ceremony is early enough that he can get to both. But it was another scare nonetheless.)
So, at about 12 days before the wedding, I no longer had 50 attendees, so I cancelled the valet parking and began cutting all of our orders for catering, tables/chairs, and the rest in half. (OK. The catering was not cut entirely in half because who would be upset with leftovers of chicken long rice?)
At 11 days before the wedding, I am talking to my Auntie Mahina on the phone. She asked when we are arriving, and I tell her that we get there late on a Thursday before the Saturday wedding. So she asks when we are getting our marriage license, and I say, "Duh! Friday!" And she responds, "Duh! Department of Health - and all state offices in Hawai'i - are closed on Fridays because of budget cuts. 'Furlough Fridays,' bruddah!" So we are thinking we are going to have to get married twice - once on a Saturday and again on a Monday when the state offices reopen. But instead, my fiancee set about finding private agencies who are authorized by the state to grant marriage licenses.
Finally, at 10 days before the wedding, 8 days before we board the plane, I receive a panicked phone call from a stranger. It is the sister of the long-time friend from whom I have always rented the same house in Kane'ohe. It turns out that my friend was stricken with pancreatic cancer and had only days to live. Having no time to process this information, the sister then relays more bad news: Because my friend was in such bad health for so many months, despite booking the house last August and sending many confirmation e-mails, my reservation was not noted anywhere in the reservations book, and the family members who had taken over the rental property during this time had rented the house to other parties. My family had been...evicted. I had 8 days to find a home for three weeks that sleeps 6 people. I pulled two all-nighters spraying the rental listings with desperate e-mails looking for a home until I came up with two homes - splitting the trip across two different towns, moving in the middle of the three weeks because nobody had three weeks availability on such short notice. And these homes cost twice as much as originally budgeted.
And at one week until boarding the plane, perhaps as a result of all of this stress, I awoke with a 102-degree fever and all of the symptoms of bronchitis. I tried to see my own family doctor, but he indicated that he had no openings for at least 5 days. I decided on the spot to change from my uncaring GP of 15 years to somebody new, but after calling all around practices in two different states, nobody was accepting new patients. So, I just figured it was the Lord's will that I not live to see this wedding because my temperature was not getting any better on its own.
Why am I telling you this? This forum has had enough trials of its own the last few months - some of these fueled by yours truly - that we really don't need another one now. But that is not what this is. This is the story of how social networking - and a whole lot of aloha - fixed pretty much everything.
At each new crisis along the way, I posted the latest trial on my Facebook wall. And each time, somebody stepped up with tremendous grace and aloha - each another reminder that God is still in each of us and is surely in this wedding and life of wedded bliss that should follow. So here are the stories of heroism - names and faces you may or may not know.
When I posted my medical crisis publicly, a high school friend whom I had not seen in over 25 years contacted me. She is a nurse at a medical practice less than 5 miles from my home. She got me an appointment within 3 hours. Understanding the timeline until my departure, the doctor aggressively treated what we believe to be strep throat with both an antibiotic and an antiviral. Mahalo to you, Meredith Linde Brown, desite that you do not read this forum.
When I posted that I had lost my photographer, your own Lynn Piccoli contacted me with several amazing recommendations, as did Michael O'Brien, a photojournalist from the Big Island who I knew from his work for the Aloha Festivals Falsetto Contests. Lynn's recommendation turned out to be - thankfully - available on such short notice and a true visionary with a camera. I can't wait to see how he captures my beautiful fiancee on film. Mahalo, Bob The Camera Man (www.bobthecameraman.com) and mahalo, Lynn, for your amazing gift of kokua.
When I posted that no florist would do business with us, once again Lynn Piccoli made just one recommendation - Watanabe Floral of Kalihi (www.watanabefloral.com). And, once again, we score big with a beautiful bouquet for the bride, beautiful leis to match, and elegant but simply centerpieces. Jeff Au Hoy's mom, Maria, made excellent suggestions too, but Watanabe was the first call we made and the first response we received. In fact, they have called us every night like clockwork just to check-in and make sure that our needs haven't changed. Such aloha - both from Watanabe and again from Lynn Piccoli. Thank you, darling.
The catering issue was a huge mess. Any cateter we found besides the one we fired (and I don't wish to malign them because I have worn their t-shirt proudly and no doubt many of us eat there when we crave laulau and happen to be down near School St.) was more than twice as expensive. (The lesson here, of course, being that if something seems too good to be true...) And this is where Auntie Amy Ku'uleialoha Stillman steps in. With a sister-in-law in the food service industry, Amy and her 'ohana brainstormed my situation and eventually came to one conclusion: Yama's (www.yamasfishmarket.com). OK, this is a place I had eaten many times on my visits. So why I didn't think of them for catering I have no idea. I just have to say that Brian Yamamoto is the most flexible and professional gentleman I have ever worked with. (And I used to be a professional event planner!) He provided a menu (based on my choices - not the pre-selected choices that the other restaurant insisted upon) and contract to me the same day I contacted him, and his invoice comes in at the same price as the fired caterer but with the additional cost of set-up and two servers - a huge bargain, if you ask me. When I called him back to let him know that my head count had gone down significantly (I would have no longer made the fired caterer's minimum of 100, so I would have been cateter shopping anyway), he said that he would be happy reduce the counts but then suggested that we use any remaining budget I might have to show my mainland guests flying in for the ceremony and even bigger and better taste of Hawai'i. When I asked what he had in mind, he sent me a new menu and contract with the addition of laulau and 8 pounds of ahi poke - and STILL came in under ther original estimate. Mahalo, Brian, and mahalo especially to Auntie Amy for the excellent recommendation.
And while I am at it, although it is not one of the aspects of planning that ever went awry, Amy is also responsible for choosing our wedding cake. Because my fiancee and I could not be there on the ground to taste cake, Amy - who does not have a car - mapped out the bus routes to all of our selected bakeries, and (as an educator might) wrote a rubric to describe the cakes she would taste for us. She then set out on a day-long trip to taste cake and reported back. You have read Amy's writing. So you can imagine the vivid and eloquent reviews of cake that she provided. We could practically taste the cake. But, of course, as Amy and I now have a long history of disagreeing, we did not go with her first choice, but she gave us enough information to know that the choice we made is a good one - lemon liliko'i with real cymbidium orchids and sugar plumeria from Cakeworks (www.cakeworks.org). Mahalo, Cakeworks, and mahalo, Amy, for coming through for me in ways that go so far beyond cake and caterers that the world should know for once and for all just how much I love you.
As these wedding planning stories became more and more dire, a silent voice stepped forward to lend every possible assistance. Since meeting her and her husband 7 years ago, I have simply called her "Auntie Lorri." She is, in fact, Lorri Lake, the widow of Kahauanu Lake Trio bassist and singer Tommy Lake. Lorri began making endless phone calls in the service of finding us a replacement rental home. I eventually succeeded on my own, but I don't know how many hours she spent on this task. When I asked her why she would go to so much trouble, she said, "Because of the way you sing "Pua 'Ahihi" - the song on which her husband sang the lead on that classic recording. So much aloha - because I could sing a song? I will never begin to understand this. But along with Amy, Lorri will be my on-the-ground planner to make sure the delivery people put the chairs and tables exactly where I want them and that every aspect of this painful planning is executed to a joyous conclusion for me and my bride. And I will no doubt sing that song at the reception - because I don't know how else to thank a person anymore.
Finally, as I lay sweating and coughing yesterday, the U.S.P.S. arrives with a parcel of massive proportion. It is return addressed to my friend and taropatch.net member Tommy Cheng. I already know what this package contains before I open it because in addition to be an amazing musician and an amazing human being, Tommy is exceedingly gifted with a paintbrush. I wait for Cherylann to return home and we open it together, and inside we find a painting. I would describe it to you, but words do not do it justice. But I will tell you what the artist wrote on the back of the painting:
THE SPIRITS OF KING KAMEHAMEHA IV AND QUEEN EMMA WITNESS THE WEDDING OF BILL WYNNE AND CHERYLANN SCHMIDT AT THE QUEENʻS SUMMER PALACE, HĀNAIAKAMĀLAMA ON JUNE 25, 2011
I cried at this, and I am crying again as I write it. I am not relying on my usual hyperbole when I say that Cherylann and I immediately gave this a prominent place in our most often used room, and when I awoke this morning from the first fulll night's sleep I have had in nearly a week, the fever was gone, my throat was opened and I could swallow, and I arose from bed to sit on my deck, listen to Hawaiian music, and write this story for you over coffee. The spirits of the departed royals at work, perhaps? Mahalo, Tommy. We are friends forever.
I wanted to share these stories with you because as we debate the definition of "Hawaiian music," the events of the last few weeks make me finally realize that we have been debating the wrong thing entirely. We should have been debating what it means to "live and act Hawaiian." The stories I describe here are stories of simple human kindness and decency. Perhaps because I am from the east coast most of my life or perhaps because I was simply blind to it, I do not recall many such stories during the first 40 years of my life. But in the last 6 weeks, with eyes wide open, aloha is everywhere I look. These people who have reached out to me and my bride know what it means to "live aloha" - whether they be a Hawai'i-born haole, a California "Podagee" transplanted to Hawai'i, or Hawai'i-born Hawaiians who have chosen to make new lives in Michigan or New York. Aloha knows no bounds of geography. And when I am well enough again and through these trials and at last happily married, I will raise a glass to all of you and extend a new debate: If aloha knows no bounds of geography, then why should the aloha-filled music of Hawai'i?
With mahalo in advance on the well-wishes to come...
~ Bill Wynne
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markwitz
`Olu`olu
USA
841 Posts |
Posted - 06/18/2011 : 06:54:13 AM
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My heart is warmed. I also have first hand knowledge of the powers of Lynn Piccoli. This includes learning how to break into your own vacation condo after you have left the keys on the kitchen counter. Lynn, your powers and resources never cease to amaze.
Thanks for posting this, Bill. It's always good to be reminded of the good people can do for each other.
Congratulations on your upcoming nuptials. |
"The music of the Hawaiians, the most fascinating in the world, is still in my ears and
haunts me sleeping and waking."
Mark Twain |
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ypochris
Lokahi
USA
398 Posts |
Posted - 06/18/2011 : 09:46:53 AM
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For me, moving to the mainland really opened my mind to the level of aloha there is in Hawai'i. When you have always lived in it, it is not even something you notice, but when you experience the indifference people express towards others in other places, true appreciation of the beauty of aloha quickly surfaces.
Congratulations and the best of luck on the wedding- weddings are always stressful, and can even destroy relationships, but hopefully the problems all came in advance, and working through them made your commitment stronger and more real. |
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Admin
Pupule
USA
4551 Posts |
Posted - 06/19/2011 : 4:15:25 PM
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Bill,
Thanks for sharing your wedding story... and it has not even taken place yet! Wishing you and Cherylann a most joyous day on June 25th and many more thereafter. After all the ups and downs in wedding planning, hoping that the rest will be smooth, smooth sailing.
Much aloha to you both. |
Andy |
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A Wedding Story - And an Outpouring of Aloha
