My husband and I got married at Four Seasons Maui on 4/11/19 and we could not be more thrilled with how our wedding turned out!

We knew we wanted to have a destination wedding in Hawaii because we didn't want a big wedding and we wanted it to be more of an experience than a "traditional" affair. While I was in Maui in March 2018, I looked at a few different venues on Maui and FS immediately stood out. FS is a cut above the rest and the most beautiful resort I've ever seen. I met with one of the wedding planners to tour different ceremony and reception sites--every space she showed me was stunning. In the end, it was a no brainer to select Plumeria Point for the ceremony (it was tucked away in a corner of the resort with ocean views and was the perfect size for our group of about 40) and the Fountain View Lawn & Terrace for the cocktail hour and reception. The terrace is covered with built-in recessed lighting, speakers, and fans, and has gorgeous blue shutters that can be closed to make the event more private. We were able to use a Bose speaker aux hook-up for music there, which was perfect since we wanted music, but not a DJ/dancing. The terrace also would have served as the back-up ceremony location in case of rain (and honestly that would've been fine by me because it's such a beautiful space!).

Many of the other places I visited didn't hold a candle to FS. Lots of resorts book multiple weddings in the same day and the event spaces are ugly/public. At FS, they only do one wedding a day so they can focus all of their attention on you. While no resort wedding could ever be "private", the spaces FS provided were intimate and significantly more private. Another plus to FS is that it had direct beach access. We could easily walk down to the beach for pictures and there weren't that many people there.

Once we signed our paperwork and booked FS as our venue in May 2018, we were assigned a wedding planner, Samantha. Samantha was instrumental in coordinating our other vendors and we had a dream team! Planning a destination wedding is a lot of work, but Samantha was always very patient in answering my questions and offered great suggestions. I'm very much a type-A person--I love to plan and organize everything and I ask a TON of questions--and Samantha took it all in stride. Samantha helped me to make my vision for the wedding a reality and I will forever be grateful to her.

When my fiancé and I arrived on Maui, Samantha made herself 100% available to us. When we went to go get our marriage license signed the day before the wedding, the lady we were supposed to have the appointment with wasn't there. Samantha worked quickly to get us another appointment at a different office that same day. Phew! Something that could have been disastrous turned into a non-issue. Samantha even got us little presents from the FS store as an apology gift, which was totally unnecessary since she had already solved the problem quickly, but was very sweet nonetheless.

On the day of, Samantha expertly coordinated our vendors and our bridal party so everyone was where they needed to be. She also threw some freebies our way (upgraded room for the wedding night, some upgraded décor) and made us feel totally VIP. My bridal party and I got ready in the Ilima Suite and it was so swanky (definitely recommend for future brides!).

When it came time to walk down the aisle, I was absolutely floored with how stunning the ceremony site was. It was beautiful by itself, but Samantha transformed it. The florals were gorgeous and the setup was just lovely. I felt this way again when we made it down to the reception dinner. The décor and design was executed flawlessly.

The service during dinner was unparalleled. I wish I could remember her name, but there was a server dedicated to our sweetheart table and she hooked us up! She made sure we got food first, brought us drinks, checked on us, and I never saw the bottom of my glass. Truly phenomenal service and she was such a doll!

When my husband and I made it back to our (upgraded!) room, there was a large bouquet of flowers, chocolate covered strawberries, two bottles of champagne, and a fruit/cheese platter. I couldn't believe how thoughtful it was...we were treated like royalty. They even delivered all of our wedding flowers to the room--it smelled amazing in there!

Samantha and Four Seasons went above and beyond to give us the wedding of our dreams. Wedding day was no joke one of the most relaxing days of my life. Because it was planned so well, I basically just showed up and enjoyed myself. Our wedding was pure magic and we will always look back on that day with great fondness and love. We are Four Seasons customers for life! THANK YOU!!!

As a piece of advice to other brides who are planning destination weddings: everything really does come together towards the end of the planning process. The bulk of the planning happened in the 2-3 months leading up to the big day. Be patient :)

The Four Seasons Resort at Maui exceeded my expectations. Our wedding was absolutely gorgeous and the staff was all so accommodating, and generous. They made us feel so welcome. From the moment we checked-in, we got to our room and there was our wedding Bouquet sample in a vase, chocolates and champagne awaiting us. Wedding day approaches and there was a single rose, another champagne bottle, and the outlining of a heart shape made of rose petals on our bed. It was so beautiful, everything about it was so exciting and everyone was awesome! We will def be back in the near future for our anniversaries. Karen Lincoln was our wedding coordinator and she was the most organized woman I have ever met! she was on top of everything and made sure it all flowed together! not only were we impressed but so were our guests. The only complaint I have is the salon Orchid, it was very nice and the front desk lady as well as my nail tech were very friendly, but my make up apt was late, I had to wait a little over 20 min and I was already on a time frame. It was rushed and she wasn't very knowledgeable, so I just feel like maybe for the cost of the service it couldve been a little better experience, being as I rushed back to the room and had to fix it myself and in doing so my hair suffered a little since I had to spend more time on my makeup. Other than that though I give the hotel a huge thumbs up! Absolutely in awe of it!!!!!!!!!!! thank you four seasons!

After deciding to do a destination wedding in Maui, we looked into several resorts mostly in the Wailea area. The Four Seasons definitely stands above and beyond the rest of them, and everything from start to finish was perfect. When looking at different resorts, the one thing that made them stand out was their commitment to ONE wedding event per day on their entire premise -- which means all the service people in the hotel are aware of your event and dedicated to it. As opposed to (for example) the Grand Wailea, which schedules you for a 2 hour block, because they schedule multiple on the same day OR the SeaWatch restaurant where we ate and saw 3 different weddings happening all within visual and hearing distance of each other.

Planning our dream wedding from NYC, our wedding coordinator (Denise) was great and attentive to all details. She was just as anal as myself, which allowed me to relax and just let her coordinate all the vendors. Being a busy physician, wedding planning with the Denise & the Four Seasons (from afar) was not nearly as stressful as my friends who were coordinating their own in-town weddings. The Four Seasons has a relationship with many great vendors to choose from too, all of who were very professional.

In terms of the actual wedding week and day, it was beyond perfect. A regular room is included in their basic wedding package - but we were freely upgraded to an enormous 1200+ sq ft oceanview suite for our stay and arrived to a bottle of Vueve champagne and fresh flowers. I was so relaxed on my wedding day (more so than my maid of honor!) and it was all due to my wedding planner who made it happen without a hitch and has a great artistic eye and incorporated my wedding day projects and visions into the space perfectly. All our guests raved about the food too, claiming it was the best they'd eaten at a wedding! We also had a day after brunch buffet at DUO - again we just showed up and enjoyed ourselves!

If I had to do it again, I wouldn't hesitate to choose Four Seasons Maui... they really did make our wedding dream come true -- above and beyond anything we had ever expected. Who knows, maybe we'll do a vow renewal there every few years!