One month prior to our trip, we posted on social media a wedding photography giveaway; a chance for one lucky couple to win a wedding photography package valued at $5,000. This is our second time ever doing a wedding giveaway and we love doing it because it’s fun and exciting for us to be able to give back and bless a couple with our services. We announced the winner one week later, booked our flights and we were ready to go!

Upon landing in San Diego, we were greeted by our lucky couple, Ricky and Amanda, at the San Diego International Airport. We also got to meet up with our friend from Rome, Davide! He just flew in from Las Vegas and was now on vacation, after working on a cruise ship for the past six weeks in the Atlantic. He wanted to reconnect with us again (since our trip to New York in 2019) to shoot and learn photography, but also because we are based in Hawaii and he resides in Italy.

After settling in our hotel, we headed out to El Paisa Fresh Mexican Grill for a Taco Tuesday feast, which was recommended by our lovely couple. We had some crazy good Mexican tacos and discovered the best ceviche enchiladas in all of San Diego.

Day 2

We headed out to Balboa Park to shoot with our couple, Ricky and Amanda. Because we  flew to San Diego for our wedding giveaway, we wanted to take advantage of our location and scenery by inviting our couple for an engagement shoot. It was a perfect time to get to know more about what San Diego has to offer through the eyes of our San Diego residents.

KBBQ

Then, we had some AYCE KBBQ, which for sure we should’ve called it a day.

MAOLI IN CONCERT

But we later found out from our friends, Lauren and Christian (who just so happened to be the winners of our first wedding giveaway) tell us that our friends from Maoli were in town for their Sense of Purpose world music tour. We decided to take advantage of the opportunity and use the concert as a photography teaching platform for our friend from Italy. That night, we made it to the Music Box Venue in Downtown San Diego, reconnected with Lauren and Christian, shared high fives with Maoli then captured the entire show.

DAY 3

The next day we headed back downtown for Ricky and Amanda’s wedding. We spent the entire day at the wedding, shooting and celebrating with their loved ones.

That night, we learned about getting the In-N-Out 4x4 burger from our friend Davide and decided to stay up the rest of the night. We were scheduled to leave back to Hawaii that early morning flight so we spent the night before our flight teaching our friend some photography editing. Because we left early to the airport, we learned that our flight back to Hawaii was quite empty (which meant we had the whole row to ourselves to sleep the ENTIRE flight home). 

It was an amazing time in San Diego and we were so happy that we got to reconnect with a lot of our friends on this trip. It was most memorable that we got to hang with Davide, teach him first-hand the types of clientele we love to film and photograph and make the best out of all the Mexican dishes in San Diego. We also can’t thank our couple enough, Ricky and Amanda, for the amazing hospitality during our stay and for the love + aloha that we felt from not only them, but their family and friends as well.  Lastly, we were happy to be home and well rested because it was time to prep gear for the next day for another wedding, this time our childhood friends.