There is nothing better than getting off the beaten path with your love for a Halekala sunrise elopement. Haleakala is one of the most powerful places on the planet, and a special place to elope in Hawaii. Maile and Joe celebrated as the sun came up… these two born and raised island babes have a unique soul connection — to each other and to the land — and being at 10,000 feet was something truly special.
Maile’s dad lived on the slopes of Haleakala as a kid, and Joe is from a small town nearby, Kaniao. What’s funny is both Maile and Joe are from Hawaii, but found love on the mainland. They met on a camping trip for a friend’s birthday in California, and have been together ever since.
From Maile: “We both had dreams of one another the night before we met. I dreamed of us having kids and being old and gray together. He dreamed of a girl with brown hair and brown eyes that was so nice to him. We both told our mutual friend Jeanette our dreams on the day we met, and she was like, holy crap.”
Within 72 hours of meeting, they moved into their friends double wide trailer with their 2 kids for 8 months. Maile and Joe then moved home, and live in the cute town of Kula. This area of the island is potent for them both, so walking up at 3:45am in the morning to get to the summit was perfect. also, shoutout coffee.
Lauren of Hawaii Floura and Fauna created gorgeous lei for the occasion.
From Lauren: “Haleakala crater is one of the most magical places to me and many. That being said any sort of ceremony or photoshoot taking place in such a sacred place needs to be special. I knew the lei needed to be made from natives, gathered from the very slopes of Haleakala. I wanted to stick to one plant, currently threatened and almost over harvested to the point of extinction, however is now claiming its space once again in the Hawaiian ecosystem. The ‘iliahi, Hawaiian Sandalwood. My original plan was to only use this plant, however that proved harder than I thought. Luckily, I have a few aunties and friends cultivating this plant among many other native and endemic plants. It is such an amazing gift to be able to have such healthy outcroppings, that are now able to be gathered from. So the lei lived with a combination of a few different native plants.
Lei is one way of connecting humans to their surrounding nature and cherishing the many things that root us all together.”
and the quilt Maile and Joe stayed warm in, is from Vintage Kantha — available at Driftwood Maui.
mahalo to everyone who made this so special!
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