Hawaii fall destination wedding

This is all so frustrating

Wedding was supposed to be June 2nd 2020... had to postpone to August 24th 2020 (was reassured things would be open by then).. now they just extended the tourist quarantine until July 31st so I'm cutting it SO close...

So embarrassing if all our guests have to re-book everything a THIRD time...

Also the virus is going to be just as bad in early 2021 (like a regular flu season)... I can totally see them just closing everything down again.

We officially made the decision today to postpone. I actually feel good about it. I am tired of the worrying about everything.

We have been told by our venue to wait and see, because even though they probably lift the quarantine requirement when we can present a proof of negative covid result within 72 hours from our flight, they might be canceling the lift of quarantine.


Besides, we have been looking for days for a facility who can provide rapid test. We have been told from hospitals that rapid tests are only for patients that is hospitalized. Many rapid test facilities like cvs, walgreens, are no longer giving rapid results because they are backlogged. All testing area we have called and visited needs 4-10 business days for the result!
I am slowly losing hope, and feels like it won’t happen this year 😔

View Quoted Comment I’m so sorry. It was a tough decision for us but it felt good to finally make the decision. I know everyone is different though. I hope things can work out the way that works best for you.

Hawaii announced today that the mandatory 14 day quarantine will now go through 8/31 and they’ll allow the negative test beginning 9/1. I’m scheduled to fly out on 9/14, I am so sad, and nervous! I completely support their reasoning, it’s the right call. Processing my feelings though, ya know? Our original trip was supposed to be 7/20.

View Quoted Comment My heart goes out to you! We are fortunate that we haven’t had to change anything yet, but with each month I get less and less hopeful. I hope you are able to go in September! What a crazy stressful year to get married in.

We originally were supposed to get married 3/28/2020 in Hawaii. However, due to restrictions and uncertainties for our guests we decided to postpone to 10/18/2020. With the recent Hawaii travel quarantine extension to September 1st it has me nervous. I don’t want to postpone again 😩

Just yesterday we officially decided to postpone our wedding. Given the extended quarantine to September 1st, we just didn’t want to risk it. Our wedding was supposed to be September 22,2020. Looks like we will be waiting until October 20, 2021 now! I’m sad, but honestly feeling a slight sense of relief. I’ve been so stressed and now I don’t have to be. I do hope some of you are able to move forward with your original plans! My fingers are crossed for you!!!

We are starting to lean towards cancelling our Hawaii wedding and getting married in our backyard. It saddens me, but I do feel a sense of relief thinking of that option. This waiting game is tough and makes it difficult to be excited to get married. My biggest challenge at this point is trying to get deposits back. Does anyone have any tips on how I can go about that? I’m never good at being stern, but this is out of our control and we have quite a bit of money just in deposits. At this point I feel like my energy needs to be put into my backyard wedding so that I can have something that is still beautiful and still feel like a wedding. I just want to be married.... I’m so over this year haha

We have our wedding on 10/10/20 on the Big Island. We are now in talks to postpone because if the governor keeps extending the quarantine requirements, we just have no idea if we will be good or not. I’m just really upset and having a tough time processing all of this. I don’t want to put my life on hold and push off marriage, children, etc but at the same time we and our guests can not afford to be there for an extra 14 days prior. We’re talking to our venue this week to get our options then will make a plan.

My hotel on Oahu just called and canceled our reservation for Sept 14th for our wedding/honeymoon (our postponed plan from our original date that already passed). They said they’re closed indefinitely and for now canceling reservations in September, not canceling October ones yet but not taking any new reservations (not even for 2021) at this time. I’m so sad.

View Quoted Comment I’m so sorry to hear this!!! I get you. This year straight sucks. I don’t know about your vendors or about your venue, but all of ours would not give deposits back, but would reschedule without charging us any fees for rescheduling. We have a ton of money in deposits too. If we hadn’t, we would probably do something here in our hometown Reno/Lake Tahoe area, but I don’t want to lose all that money. So, we went with the putting life kind of on hold option and are planning to have the new hawaii wedding in October of next year! Sucks a little to wait, but I do feel a lot less stressed now. Stupid COVID.

View Quoted Comment Sorry for that. We postponed ours too, until.... who knows when this covid is gone ☹️

View Quoted Comment Which venue are you using?

View Quoted Comment We aren’t using a true venue really, we are using Weddings of Hawaii to do our ceremony at Kahana Bay up in the north east shore of Oahu! We rented a VRBO in Hauula for four nights and that’s where we are having the reception!!

View Quoted Comment We reserved our date with WoH too! We are given 2 years to choose a new date. They told us that their vendors believed the quarantine won’t be extended, so we rebooked our July ceremony to August. Turns out it is extended, and honestly I think it won’t change much for a while. Look up Hawaiian governor’s Instagram. Hawaiian people also prefer not to have any tourists to protect themselves from more covid virus carrier. So, I decided to wait until it is safe for everyone to travel. We don’t want to get sick, especially during our special time.

We have officially decided to cancel our Hawaii destination wedding so that we can try to put together a wedding in our backyard. I’m so bummed it’s come to this, but I’m also not wanting to wait to get married. We are getting a little bit of our deposit back, but unfortunately we are losing a lot of money too. It’s disheartening, but at the same time we are so excited to get married and are trying to look at the positives. I hope you all are able to have the wedding of your dreams whether it’s in Hawaii, postponed to a new date, or moved to a location closer to you. No one could have prepared any of us for this year, but at the end of the day at least we get to marry the love of our life. I wish you all the very very best❤️

My heart goes out to all of you. We were supposed to get married on Maui, 9.20.20. We didn't have a ton of communication with our vendor team so I was stressed out from May to July. When the Governor made the decision around 15 July to extend the quarantine vs negative COVID test to 1 September we made the difficult decision to cancel our HI wedding all together. We are now getting married with just our parents, his brother, and my grandparents in our home state of MD. It was NOT the wedding I specifically wanted, but I still get to marry him on our original date!


We scrapped our entire HI plans and got all but $500 back from the venue and now we are just dealing with the airlines for our flight. We are also looking at the bright side we are going to plan a trip to Bora Bora instead for our honeymoon next year (provided we can travel).
Whatever the decision for those getting married in October it will be the right decision for you. It was difficult to come to terms with everything. We don't trust the governor of HI opening up the state come 1 September.
Good luck everyone and congratulations!

View Quoted Comment We too have decided on October 2021. I’m looking at the bright side of things with my decision and fingers crossed that nothing interferes with my future date. Good luck

Hello! I just read through these posts and am glad to find it. Although I'm in the same boat as many of you, I can certainly sympathize and I truly hope you are able to make your weddings happen in Hawaii in 2021. We just got engaged and I have been back and forth over when and where. After many conversations, I feel like Hawaii is a great choice for us.

I took my mother to Honolulu in August 2017. It was a bucket list trip for her (she had brain cancer). She passed in May 2020 and we were unable to do a funeral or spreading of her ashes. So after thinking about our wedding day, I thought it would be such a neat idea to have dinner on the star of Honolulu (it was our favorite excursion when we went), that way I can have a piece of my mother there with me. We never wanted a big wedding, and Hawaii will likely be us, our two girls and 5 friends, which we are completely okay with. So I've just started my hunt for places to have the ceremony.

Good luck to all making their plans!