I chuckled back that I only knew of one place that could possibly fit her criteria, and that would be Kualoa Beach Park. I told her that I had never done a wedding there and would welcome the opportunity. I knew the park rather well, after all, the park was only 10 minutes from my house, and I fished there on a regular base...we'll, when I had the time to fish. The only thing that I told her would be risky, would be the weather factor. The reason why I had resisted on doing many weddings here is that I would rarely find a "great" day there, and the risk of rain would be rather high on the windward side of Oahu. Jeannie, didn't care...she wanted to go for it. I told her I was game.

So her wedding day flew around rather quickly, and Jeannie had a great weather day thank god! The service was completely awesome as well. I believe Jeannie and Matt had known each other for eight years. They also lived together for eight years...and they were both happy to finally tie the knot. Elias, one my ministers, performed a great Hawaiian chant during the lei ceremony for the father who was Matt's bestman.

The challenging part to the entire Kualoa Beach Park experience was that the beach there wasn't that nice. I guess a few weeks earlier storm surf had washed up seaweed, that literally made it look like there were a million turds on the beach. To combat this problem, I positioned Jeannie and Matt's ceremony on the hill overlooking the water and shot all of my photos and video from a low angle, thus using the hill to block out their view of the sand. Getting low with the camera, limits your ground horizon, and you can hid a lot of imperfections in the ground with this technique!

For the pictures on the beach, I literally picked up the seaweed and tossed it in the water to clear a nice spot for us. We also got a great mountain shots of the Ko'olau mountain range for Jeannie. There was a slight sea mist or haze in the mountains when I took these shots. A lot of photographers use a polarizer or different filters to get rid of this haze. To me though, the haze adds character to the mountain and makes the foreground pop more.

Now here's the kicker to this entire experience. During their reception, they noticed that I wore Van's shoes and somehow we got onto the subject of mountain biking. It just so happened that Jeannie and Matt, and her maid of honor, Olivia, and Oliva's boyfriend, Peter were all hardcore mountain bikers. In fact, Olivia and Peter had flown their bikes down to hit a few trails. We really hit it off from there and I immediately invited everyone to come biking with me. Jeannie and Matt though didnt come. Apparently Jeannie didn’t want to take her husband on the trail called "The Widowmaker." Olivia "Livy" and Peter though came along.

Livy and Peter joined my friends with me on two trails: The Widowmaker and Cambodia. We hit speeds on our mountain bike that literally made my heart stop. I have to say though, these two trail rides were the best that I've been on because of the company. Livy and Peter by far, were some of the best mountain biking buddies I had ever encountered. Their personalities, mixed together with my friends we were very much so like one big happy bike family. In fact, we plan to tour Europe together next year, and to hit them up in Altanta an North Carolina, for a great ride.

See, this is why I love my job. I love meeting new people!

Jeannie and Matt will be writing to me hopefully soon to fill everyone in on their adventure in Oahu. Matt, by the way, lost his wedding ring while snorkeling on Maui! Jeannie joked with me "That's why I bought him a cheap ring!" And every picture that featured Matt's ring she would jokingly heckle "Hey, there's the ring you lost."