Wrap This!

In the spirit of the holiday season, here is a fun game that I recently presented to several of my corporate clients' holiday parties (I do team-building exercises and motivational speaking for companies and corporations in addition to weddings). This game can easily be adapted to a wedding, where the wedding party can compete against each other. Or, representatives from each table can compete to win the right to go next to the buffet. The ideas are limitless.

Each contestant gets an assistant of his or her own choosing. The contestant also gets two oven mitts, one scissors, a roll of tape, a roll of wrapping paper, and a gift box (the type that holds clothes, like the ones you can get from Macy's, are best.) When the Master of Ceremonies says go, each contestant must wrap his or her box using the wrapping paper, scissors, and roll of tape. The first one to complete the task wins! Simple, right? Oh yeah, there's a twist--each contestant will be wearing the oven mitts during the task. The assistant's job is to help cut measure out and cut the tape, but the assistant cannot touch the box or wrapping paper.



This game gets CRAZY! Don't believe me? The next time you have to wrap a gift, try it while wearing oven mitts, and give yourself a time limit of five minutes. It's not so easy! When we did it for the corporate holiday parties, the audiences were on their feet and screaming & cheering for their favorites!

Holiday Group Fun!

Several weeks ago, I served as the Master of Ceremonies for the Holiday Party of the Oahu Wedding Association at Ploi Thai Restaurant, and just yesterday, I was honored to play the same role at the holiday party for the Hawaii chapter of the National Association of Catering Executives, held at the Moana Surfrider Hotel. Yesterday's party was great! The food was 'ono (delicious) as usual, and I helped NACE create an organized, well-presented, and fun presentation. To kick off the fun after dinner, the audience participated in a really fun and lively icebreaker. The Holiday Music Challenge by DAVID LOUIS added even more momentum to the production; it was down to the wire with the final two teams, when the dominant team was INSTANTLY eliminated with one wrong answer. And of course, the highlight of the evening was the Twisted Santa Gift Giveaway, in which guests would choose a gift among a group of gifts, and then before opening that present, got to choose from other gifts that had already been opened! For some who decided to give up their unopened gift, it came as a major surprise when they learned that the gift they gave up had a better value to them than the gift they ended up with!

Association members also did their part to help the needy during the holidays by bringing canned good donations to benefit Aloha Harvest, which distributes food to the less fortunate.

It was a fun time by all, and all for a great cause! Hopefully I will get pictures up soon of this event, and the OWA celebration as well.

Here is the timeline for the NACE-Hawaii Holiday Party:

Sequence	Time	Event
1	6:00pm	Doors open; cocktail hour; tours of the Spa every 10 minutes
2	6:30pm	Welcome of guests; chapter president DIANNA talks about NACE
3		Dinner; interactive game to entertain guests as they wait for the buffet
4	7:30pm	DAVID LOUIS to present a new holiday interactive game
5		Raffle Prize Drawings (tickets from canned good donations or winnings from interactive game)
5a		Centerpiece Giveaway? (tentative)
6		Secret Santa Giveaway
7		Music by DJ Troy Michael
8	9:00pm	Party Ends

For the NACE Holiday Party, special thanks to the following "production crew" for making this party a success:

• DIANNA SHITANISHI, Hawaii Weddings & Events, for putting it all together
• TONI TAKATA, Moana Surfrider Hotel, a Westin Resort, for the great food and hosting us in such a beautiful location (beachfront, with superb views of the sunset!)
• NAOMI LEE, Les Saisons, for the gorgeous decor
• TROY TERAZONO, Troy Michael DJ Entertainment, for the fine music to set the cool holiday atmosphere
• DAVID LOUIS, Dynamic Sounds, for the fun interactive game

And to those who came, THANK YOU! Your participation made the party truly memorable!

OWA Halloween Fun

Yesterday, I provided music and served as the Master of Ceremonies for the Oahu Wedding Association's annual Halloween Party.



This year, the event was held at WENDY ROBIN'S Studio W of Honolulu. The fun was evident from the get-go, with people arriving in costume:







The low-key costume contest was entertaining, and the delicious food by VANESSA HOLINGER with Beaches & Backyards Catering was 'ono (delicious). The food was sooo good that all of it (except for six pieces of sushi) were eaten!

All in all, it was a very lively and entertaining experience.



Special thanks to last night's "Production Crew" for making the event such a success:

• Dave Miyamoto & Michelle Gouda, Dave Miyamoto & Co.
• Wendy Robin, Studio W of Honolulu
• Vanessa Hollinger, Beaches & Backyards Catering
• Kris Labang, On3 Photography, for taking all of these great images
• Dina (Wendy's friend), for letting us use her studio next door as well

Thanks also to Ryan Pierce from Lift Your Spiritz for the fun spontaneous flair bartending demonstration!



And to those who came, thank you!

Find more images of this event here on the Oahu Wedding Association blog.

NACE 50th Anniversary Party = success!

So we had the 50th Anniversary Party for the National Association of Catering Executives, of which I am a member, and the event turned out to be a smashing success! We had over 100 guests, lots of great food, great entertainment, and tons of fun. The money raised went to some great causes, including the Lokahi Giving Project to support former Aloha Airlines employees; Aloha Harvest, which helps distribute food to the needy; and the NACE Hawaii Scholarship Fund, which helps to support up-and-coming catering executives.

What made it great was how everybody all worked together to put on this awesome event. Members of the board and the chapter graciously donated their time and talents, and the results were very impressive. As one of the hosts of the event (sharing hosting duties with local celebrity JIM LEAHEY), and I received many positive comments--a good sign.

Our next fundraiser will be sometime in October...If everyone pitches in again and comes together, it should be just as successful as this one.

Carlos & Rolanda's crazy wedding reception

December 30 was the wedding of ROLANDA & CARLOS. This party was a blast from the very beginning. Even with the Grand Entrance, the guests were standing, cheering, and going crazy as each couple was introduced. The room hit fever pitch when we introduced the newlyweds, with the audience creating the loudest cheering you have ever heard! It worked well as the bride & groom headed to the dancefloor, where we "scratched out" of their entrance music and threw on the song Brickhouse, at which point Carlos & Rolanda started groovin' and shakin' on the dancefloor!

From that point, it was a nonstop party, with the guests constantly cheering and eagerly participating in all of the activities that Carlos & Rolanda planned for them that night!

One of the highlights was garter game Last Man Sitting. In that activity, instead of the groomsmen fighting over the garter, they would run into the audience looking for object which I call out, and the last person to come back to their seat on the dancefloor would be eliminated. When we were down to the last two finalists, I called out the final object they needed to find...and the two guys immediately started WRESTLING with each other to try to prevent the other from searching. Guests went crazy as the two guys finally broke free of each other, ran all over the ballroom, and looked under every table, nook, and cranny to find the last object. When this object was found, the guy who first found the object had a difficult time to win because the other guy tried stealing this item away!

By the end of the night, Rolanda & Carlos were still smiling, laughing, and very very happy. Their reception was a great way of ending the year on a very high note!

Caden's First Birthday Party

January 5 marked the first birthday party of CADEN. We first met his family at the wedding of Caden's parents RON & CELESTE, who got married back in December 2004. So it was quite an honor for me to be asked to host their child's first birthday party. (For my mainland clients, first birthday parties in Hawaii are very very significant events, much like bar mitzvahs, except for babies instead of teens. Many parents rate this as the second most important party they ever had to throw, besides their wedding. So for Ron & Tran, this was HUGE.)

Since it was a daytime event with a good mix of children & adults, we needed to help them create a good mix of activities that appealed to both kids and their parents. And we did! For instance, one game for the kids was called Balloon Pickup. After blowing up several bags of balloons, the kids had to pick up the amount of ballons I called for. So if I said twelve balloons, they needed to scramble and pick up 12 balloons, or they would be out of the game. It was very very cute watching the children run all around the dancefloor trying to hold onto their balloons and chasing after the ones they still needed to get.

For the adults, we played a new game called Golf Ball Chop. This was a crazy activity in which each adult contestant was given a pair of chopsticks. When I said "Go," they scrambled to the center of the dancefloor, which had about a 100 golf balls in a hula hoop. The team with could pick up the most golf balls with their chopsticks by the end of the game would win. By the time we were down to the last few balls, EVERYONE was around the dancefloor watching the spectacle and cheering for their favorites!

By the end of the day, RON & CELESTE were happy, and Caden has many memories to look back upon as he grows up!