It's easy to understand how this giant garden full of beautiful monkeypod trees would make a stunning backdrop for a wedding ceremony and reception, but what really ALLOWED us to make this special day exactly what we wanted was Bridgette Olsen, the Events Manager for the property, and her flexibility and willingness to work with making our vision a reality. We were concerned about all the different rules the property has in place, but she patiently answered all the questions, worked with us on last minute changes, and was flexible in allowing us to bring in vendors and elements that would transform the already beautiful garden into something magical. Our 180 guests were blown away by the natural green surroundings, the shoji lanterns dancing in the tree at the Makai Mound where we had our ceremony, the clear top tent filled with cafe lights and shoji lanterns, the lawn games, the food and drinks, the air conditioned restrooms that we were able to bring in so that our less able-bodied guests didn't have to hike a football field back to the existing restrooms. The Gardens provides a variety of different looks and feels for photographs. I would say that the points to take into consideration (that may not be positive) are 1) the park is open to the public when it's open to the public -- which means there may be people in the park during your event; most of them are respectful and give space, but it may impact guest parking and availability of certain areas for photos; 2) if you have a larger guest count, the price to rent the venue can get expensive very quickly as it's based on total headcount; and 3) there isn't anywhere nice nearby (like an AirBnB or hotel) to get ready -- so prepare to travel a little bit from the getting-ready-place. That being said, we would not have changed a darn thing -- there is no other venue on island that can has a similar garden look and feel, that also allows you to use the vendors that you want, and is easily accessible from all corners of the island. Moanalua Gardens provided everything we were looking for in a wedding venue -- and Bridgette Olsen was a big part of making our dreams come true.

I had my wedding at Moanalua Gardens this past summer, and while I enjoyed the gardens themselves the facilities workers were not considerate of us at all. We had a large amount of guests, and intended to use the majority of the park. The reason I picked the venue. On the day of the wedding, after we had set up the beautiful lawn games and seating arrangements for the guests I showed up to find LITERALLY 100 BRIGHT ORANGE CONEs scattered all over the park. I pleaded for them to pick them up but The wedding coordinator told me that they had to leave them there to protect the sprinklers from getting driven upon. There were no cars going in and out from that point on that day, and all of the trucks were only going to one spot. they could have make a line of cones signaling the path that was allowed for the trucks and then when they had left picked up that one line of cones. COMMON SENSE. Stuff I do/did not want to be dealing with on my wedding day. Now I have a $4000 wedding video and $4000 pictures (thankfully those could be edited but it was a pain and cost extra) with cones everywhere. I literally cried . DO NOT GET MARRIED here unless ORANGE is one of your colors. I can never have that day back and the two things i paid to remember them are just a reminder of how awful it was .

Besides the cones:
-the park requires a dance floor , which I didn't want, and when we got to our first dance it was covered in ants. We are still picking dead ants out of my dress.
-they wouldn't let me, the bride, through the gate to go to the wedding mound. The gate was locked and our ceremony was late.
-be careful, a car was broken into during our rehearsal dinner