An Indigenous Hawaiian Inspired Wedding

Indigenous Love in Hawaii - Same-Sex Wedding Inspiration - Dancing With Her - Megan Moura Photography

Inspired to create wedding inspiration that celebrated intimate weddings, this all-women team of creatives from Hawaii created this styled wedding that celebrates queer love and Indigenous Hawaiian culture.

A note from the Event Coordinator, Zabrina of The Gay Agenda Collective.

I am the owner of The Gay Agenda Collective, where I specialize in planning LGBTQIA+ weddings. As a queer Indigenous woman of color planning my own wedding, I quickly realized that my unique love story did not fit the wedding industry’s mold. I wanted to create space and care for queer couples like myself, and offer more than what they were getting.

For this styled wedding we worked with an all-female team, born and raised from Hawai’i, including the couple who are also two queer women of color who have been in a relationship for many years.

We focused on creating an intimate, simple, and still beautiful wedding for the couple. Especially since that is the season we are in currently, and large events seem like a distant memory. We wanted to focus on the love, the small details, and the simplicity of what it means to have a wedding.

All of the flowers from the shoot were harvested from nature walks and hikes by the florist. The dresses were all reclaimed rental dresses, offering a more sustainable approach to the wedding dress shopping experience. The venue is a historical site that was once owned by one of the founding fathers of mid-century modern design. We wanted to show that you can have a simple ceremony/reception right outside your home.

Being that we are all vendors born and raised in Hawai’i, having locally sourced pua lei (flowers necklace) were important to have in the place of jewelry. We wanted to adorn these women with flowers from our land and mimic styles from our Ali’i (chief) since the location of the venue is placed on one of the highest points on the island.

On the day of the shoot, we encountered heavy fog and rain that sprinkled on and off throughout the shoot, which conveyed the exact message we wanted to portray, that love can be found even in uncertain moments – and that at the core of every wedding is simply, “love.”