I eloped 7,000 miles to a paradise island — to avoid a pricey wedding

Times

10 hours ago

The Koolau mountain range, which formed nearly 2.5 million years ago after a cataclysmic volcanic explosion, spans the entirety of Oahu, the most populous Hawaiian island. Its lush green canopies roll for miles across its serrated ridges. Hidden streams snake through its forest floor. From its peaks, the Pacific stretches in all directions to the horizon.
It was against this backdrop that my partner and I tied the knot this year in a ceremony low on stress and costs (compared, at least, with the average price of a wedding in the UK) but high on good vibes and 'aloha' — the Hawaiian greeting that expresses love, kindness, harmony.
I had travelled nearly 5,000 miles, 11 hours by plane from New York, where I live and work. My wife — my fiancée, as she was then — works in Japan and had flown 4,000 miles from the opposite direction.
We were exhausted, jet-lagged and slightly nervous as we drove to our wedding venue — a 400-acre botanical garden at the base of the Koolau Range.
Why Hawaii? For us, it was an ideal meeting point; it made for a much nicer setting than the marriage bureau in New York and it meant that we could segue effortlessly into our honeymoon. Plenty of overseas visitors tie the knot here — the marriage licence office in Honolulu, the state capital, finalises the paperwork for dozens of Britons, Canadians and Europeans each month. Couples have their different reasons — from the paradisiacal allure of Hawaii, to the desire to flee the circus that has become the modern wedding. I'm knee deep in marriage season and have several friends who would say the cost and stress of their big day was not worth it (the average British wedding costs more than £23,000, according to a recent survey from wedding website Hitched).
It helps that the process is straightforward. Six weeks before the wedding I applied for a £47 licence and booked in a 15-minute meeting with a marriage agent that took place the day before our wedding, at Hawaii's department of health; no witnesses required. For £91 a minister named Jim from the Universal Life Church who lived on Oahu said that he could marry us wherever and whenever we wanted. We decided on the Hoomaluhia Botanical Garden.
It lived up to our expectations — birds of paradise soared in the skies, the ocean sparkled in the distance and the horn of a nearby parked car honked midway through the ceremony, breaking any tension. It was simple and stripped back, but the beauty of the surroundings made us feel like royalty. Being close to the mountain range, where the weather is more unpredictable than on the coast, it also rained, but this only added to the magic of the moment as we huddled in a sheltered picnic spot while Jim, in a funky Hawaiian shirt, delivered his words.
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After we said 'I do', we peeled away, umbrellas in hand, called our parents (who knew), flashed our rings and went straight to a local diner to start our honeymoon. We were splitting our ten-day break between Oahu, staying in an Airbnb in Honolulu, and Kauai, the oldest of the seven inhabited Hawaiian islands.
After arriving in Honolulu, most tourists (us included) head straight to Waikiki, its beachfront neighbourhood. Our Uber driver described it as 'Hawaii's Times Square', and he wasn't far wrong — it's all trashy bars, street performers and overpriced food. We managed just one afternoon there.
Far better were our forays into nature. We went to the North Shore for snorkelling at Shark's Cove, marvelled at the scenery of the Kualoa Ranch — where Jurassic Park and Pirates of the Caribbean were filmed — and hiked in the shadow of the Koolau Range.
But Kauai, a 30-minute flight northwest from Oahu, delivered the Hawaii that we had been hoping for — it is far more rural and authentic. We stayed on its quieter north coast, home to small towns such as Hanalei, where shaved ice drenched in syrup is served by the bucketload and the sun sets majestically behind the Napali coastline. One night we treated ourselves to a 45-minute helicopter trip that revealed inaccessible waterfalls, cliffs and rivers.
The beaches here are also less busy, although more dangerous for swimming than those in the south of the island. Even so, we found one — Anini — with calmer waters where we were able to float alongside turtles. There was kayaking too, and for two miles we paddled up the Wailua River and into the heart of the island before continuing on foot to the sacred Secret Falls. Here you can bathe at the foot of a 120ft cascade that is sometimes a trickle, at other times times a roaring torrent, depending on the season.
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We visited the vast Waimea Canyon, the so-called Grand Canyon of the Pacific, which is ten miles long, up to 3,600ft deep and crisscrossed by a series of hiking trails. In what felt like an increasingly rare expression of authentic Hawaiian culture, we were privileged to watch genuine hula dancing at a local bar, the name of which I swore not to reveal — sorry.
Our hotel, 1 Hotel Hanalei Bay, brought White Lotus levels of luxury to the experience with a room that offered views of a cliff edge under hanging vines and felt like a very upmarket jungle cabin. In 1 Kitchen, the hotel restaurant with bay views, we ate delicious coffee-crusted yellowfin tuna and bucatini with Kona shrimp. And, of course, we had a couples' massage in the top-of-the-range wellness centre.
At the end of our stay it was heartbreaking to say goodbye to each other again — something we've done many times over the past year, but especially wrenching as newlyweds. Now we're counting down the days until we are finally reunited in New York. In the meantime, those magical aloha vibes will keep us going.
Samuel Lovett and his partner were guests of Go Hawaii (gohawaii.com); 1 Hotel Hanalei Bay, which has B&B doubles from £940 (1hotels.com); and Blue Hawaiian Helicopters, which has flights from £230pp (bluehawaiian.com). Fly to Honolulu