Now & Forever Maui Weddings

Not sure where to start! We hired Theresa Tuipelehake to coordinate our wedding, let me start off by saying we never gave her a budget, so it was not about money. Her company was to set up our location, hire a minster, order a cake, flowers, limos, Photographer, restaurant, music, makeup, hair and Marriage certificate. On her website it says she lives in Maui (false). A few weeks before the wedding she requested the final payment for her «services», we told her we would like to pay cash when we got there and after we went through everything etc. She said she needed the payment now. She even said she would meet us to come pick up the cash near Newport beach CA where we live. She said «she was just visiting her family in Irvine Ca» so we kind of thought ok that make sense I guess. When we got to Maui and started asking to meet with her and for the address of the location she could not meet and could not give us the address of the location. She kept referring us to a lady named «JoJo» and said JoJO was not available and would be contacting us on Monday. Finally JoJo calls us on Monday (the wedding is Tuesday and we’ve been here since last Thursday) and we go check out the location first thing on Tuesday morning by our self. At this point we think JoJo is her assistant and Theresa told us JoJo will be available to go thru the wedding rehearsal etc. JoJo gave us the address to the location. We get to the location and it was on a beach (open beach that costs nothing to book) that first you would have to walk past are outhouses and then through a tunnel on a dirty pavement road and out to a beach that has a hideous blue fence surrounding it (this was going to be the «aisle» I walk down), that would have no chairs or no specific location. So now we are a little frantic. We walk up to this Beautiful Restaurant called Merriman’s and I ask to speak to the coordinator there and wow they were so nice and accommodating to us. Mind you this was where we asked to have our dinner at and was told by our coordinator they were booked so we asked for a place with a more private dining setting somewhere close by, she said «they don’t have that kind of stuff in Maui and everything is booked anyways.» But the day of the wedding we get here and they tell us we are in luck they don’t have any wedding booked for that day and also offer us their cabana for dinner reservations. We already booked our own dinner reservations at Cane and Canoe and when we arrived to Maui on Thursday went to the restaurant to make sure we had a nice «private» spot reserved, which we worked out and yes they DO in fact have private cabana’s and dining sections in Maui that were available! Now we just needed a new location so Merriman’s let us rent out a spot to hold our ceremony. Before we had left Maui my wife had asked Theresa to extend our limo because we had arranged to go to montage instead of back to our hotel after the ceremony. She told her ok it will be approx. $ 150 for 2 hours, when she asks her about it now that we are here she says it will be $ 200 per hour and if I don’t want to pay for it call a company and book it myself. So I did… So now that we have the location taken care of and car service we are thinking great all done! The flowers come and they are half dead and wrong. Now we talk with the photographer (JoJo) who we find out is not her assistant and informs us its not her job to go through the ceremony etc with us and she tells us that our coordinator does not live here she comes about once a year and that she does not work for her and our Minster tells us the same. So the wedding ceremony gets done and we go to dinner everything seems good dinner is great, but now the cake comes it’s the wrong flavor, its very small with dead flowers on top! WTF! Now we are done and a few days later we meet with the Photographer and start going over the pictures and all the pictures are of me during the ceremony and the back of my Brides head, you would think she would get us both and I know it sounds like a ton but she only took 200 pictures and then tells me if I want them give her $ 150 cash and she will burn a CD for me, so we did and I am happy to say we have about 15 good pictures and the rest we got are all taken from our friends and family’s phones. Let me finish by saying this company (coordinator) never called us to ask how things went or to correct any problems before during our after our wedding. DO NOT use this PERSON! Make sure you just talk with your hotel where you are staying and they will point you in the right direction.