{"id":454,"date":"2013-07-29T05:21:55","date_gmt":"2013-07-29T05:21:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/syoung100.ipower.com\/?p=454"},"modified":"2020-11-04T06:23:26","modified_gmt":"2020-11-04T06:23:26","slug":"how-and-why-i-got-into-the-hawaii-wedding-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dreamweddingshawaii.com\/how-and-why-i-got-into-the-hawaii-wedding-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"How and Why I Got Into the Hawaii Wedding Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"me-and-couple<\/a>Me with one of my clients. \u00a0Wow, my hair is short in this picture<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

HOW AND WHY I GOT INTO THE WEDDING INDUSTRY<\/span><\/h1>\n

If I could travel back into time and tell my 18 year old self that I was going to be a wedding planner, my 18 year old self would’ve probably jumped off the side of the high school auditorium.\u00a0\u00a0 Back then, in my high school years, there were two career choices I had personally laid out for myself:\u00a0 a NFL athlete, or a movie director. Two very realistic options.<\/p>\n

Becoming an NFL athlete I knew would prove difficult as I didn’t complete one football season for our high school, as I hated our coaches with a passion.\u00a0\u00a0 They really didn’t know football which was proven by their decade of win-less seasons.\u00a0 And when I mean win-less, I mean it.\u00a0 Our football team did not have a winning season in a decade.<\/p>\n

Becoming a movie director also seemed a rather difficult task, but much more doable.\u00a0 So that\u2019s where I directed my efforts.<\/p>\n

Shortly after graduating high school, I enrolled into a graphic design trade school with hopes that it would help me open doors to the movie industry.\u00a0\u00a0 Unfortunately, I was wrong, and within 2 short months I had dropped out.\u00a0 Still wanting to work in Hollywood as a director, I thought I\u2019d start teaching myself the in\u2019s and out of movie making, rather than relying on an institution.\u00a0 So I hit the bookstore.<\/p>\n

For some reason or another, I ended up figuring out that I wanted to learn the art of screenwriting, or storytelling.\u00a0 I bought a barrage of books, and started to write-write-write, for days in-and-out.\u00a0 I eventually ended up moving to California to pursue my dream, and within a very short time, I ended up with one foot in the door, with an agent, and was rubbing elbows with some major celebrity names who could make a difference in my career.\u00a0 But there was one major problem.<\/p>\n

People loved my work, they wanted to employ me, but they couldn’tbecause I was a non-union writer. \u00a0To make things much “easier,” I didn\u2019t want to join the union.\u00a0 I hated what unions stood for, and even though I had qualified to join one, I wouldn’t.\u00a0 My agent begged me to do it, but I didn\u2019t.\u00a0 I just could not stand the stranglehold unions placed on movie studios.\u00a0 They were and are still the main reason why so many movies are made in overseas.<\/p>\n

So as fast as I had one foot in the door of my dream job, I took it out, and headed back to Hawaii.\u00a0 Hollywood was not what I thought it would be.\u00a0 It was what I would call an idiocracy, or cesspool of idiots, hypocrites of the worse type, and immoral self-righteous poop-heads.\u00a0 (I can go on, but lets just say they are not who they claim to be).<\/p>\n

\"hot-shoes-hawaii-wedding<\/a>Orange Vans!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back in Hawaii, at the age of 21, I decided to go into business for myself.\u00a0 Like all former Hollywood creative drop-outs, I wanted to create a production company. \u00a0But I wanted my company to be a little different. \u00a0I wanted a diversified company that was the home to artist who were skilled in the art of photography, videography, and web design.\u00a0\u00a0 I thought with those skills, I could produce anything I wanted, market anything I wanted, play basically Zeus to anything I wanted.\u00a0\u00a0 Combined with my knowledge of storytelling, I reasoned that I would have the advantage over my competitors.<\/p>\n

The only problem was that I didn\u2019t know how to do any of those skills well.\u00a0 Then I got lucky, yet again.<\/p>\n

Shortly after I envisioned my company, a friend of mine invited me to a hotel party, and literally dragged me there as I wasn\u2019t really a \u201cparty-goer.\u201d \u00a0That night, I met one of the best wedding photographers in Taiwan (and photographers period), Wei-Jen Wang.\u00a0\u00a0 Wei-Jen was a short Taiwanese fella, shy, and was here in Oahu attending college at the request of his parents.\u00a0\u00a0 In Hawaii, he was just an international college student, but back in Taiwan, he was regarded was one of the best wedding photographers, and his pictures graced the covers of many Taiwanese Fashion and Wedding Magazines.\u00a0\u00a0 Wei-Jen decided to join my company, and that\u2019s when the fun started.<\/p>\n

With one of the best wedding photographers in the world on my staff, I quickly decided that for the time being, we would focus our efforts on becoming one of the top wedding photography companies in Hawaii.\u00a0 And within a matter of a year or so, we did.\u00a0 At the same time, we taught ourselves web design, and the art of videography (which honestly was fairly easy given my background in movie-making).\u00a0 All the while, Wei-Jen taught me almost every trick he knew about photography.\u00a0 It took us about three years to go from nobody to somebody in Hawaii.\u00a0 We were not only some of the top wedding photographers and videographers here on the islands, but we had:<\/p>\n