Mah Nah Poo Ah, And Jay's Wedding

What's the best thing about going to Hawai'i? EVERYTHING! What's the worst thing about going to Hawai'i? Only staying 3 1/2 days and it being a "business" trip for the most part.

A couple of weekends ago, I went home to Hawai'i (minus Nicole and Sean Patrick) to attend/light my cousin Jay "Sebenteen"'s wedding. If you've ever been too a Filipino wedding, you know it's more or less a three day affair. But that didn't stop me from trying to squeeze in every bit of local food I could.

The moment I landed, my brother and uncle took me to my favorite lunch plate joint, L&R Barbecue. Not to be confused with the worldwide phenomenon known as L&L Hawai'ian Barbecue, L&R is a little joint near my dad's house that serves the best chicken cutlet. My opinion anyway.

From there it was more or less straight into the wedding. But here's some photo's...



As I said in the title, Mah Nah Poo Ah, or for you local kine readers. Manapua. If you don't know what it is, you may have had it as an appetizer in a Chinese restaurant, better known as a "bau" or "bow". Basically, a steamed bun stuffed with meat. It's called Manapua in Hawai'i because in plantation days, the Chinese workers would trade lunch with other immigrants and locals who called these buns, "mea ono pua'a", which in Hawai'ian translates to, "Delicious pig bread". In the picture above is the kitchen area for a manapua factory that my brother Matt took me too so I could get my "fix". Each of those round tins are stuffed with the white buns and then steamed to perfection. You can see the lady in the back with the mound of meat filler. Usually char sui pork.

How do you make a wedding reception unique and successful from a lighting stand point? Custom gobos. In this case, I had gobos cut of the bride and groom's initials, which was a running theme for the wedding, from the invitations to the party favors. I put one at the entry door to greet the guests...
And one was focused down onto the dance floor. I had a third gobo that I was going to put on the white curtain behind the head table, but alas, I didn't have a leko with a small enough lens to throw the distance.
How else do you make a wedding reception unique and successful from a lighting stand point? Gobo patterns on the walls of the ballroom. It seems simple enough, three gobos overlapping to fill the wall, in a breakup pattern, plus a couple of up lights to highlight the sconces and to break up the pattern a little bit more. Let me tell you, this was no easy feat.
Turns out, none of the technical people who ran this ballroom had any idea as to how the power was run and how the wall outlets were ganged. I was told, "Every wall outlet has it's own breaker." And I was told this by multiple people. WRONG. Wall outlets are ganged to single 20 amp breakers. Which outlets were ganged? Your guess is as good as mine. So through a little bit of trial and error, my brother Ray and I ran cable everywhere until we got all the lights on and weren't tripping breakers off. Just in time for the reception, but not in time for the ceremony. I missed the "I do's", as did Ray, although he made a valiant effort to get to the ceremony.

Admittedly, I still had a great time. Jay and Chantel are built for each other, and everyone had a great time (as evidenced in the last picture above). The food was amazing, and the bar was open, so what can I complain about?

Never getting my fried rice, I can complain about that....

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