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On January 19th, I married the love of my life – Victoria – some in the industry may know her as Victoria Bellarosa; of course, now her legal last name is Reed. The ceremony was beautiful and took place at St. Isidore’s R.C. Church in Riverhead, NY and the reception was held at Giorgio’s in Baiting Hallow, NY. Victoria is a Long Island native, so it was only right to have the wedding close to her family. My bride was absolutely stunning as she walked down the aisle in her full fledged, custom ball gown made by Eugenia and a cathedral length veil that spanned from the floor in front and over 6 feet on the ground trailing her; As much as I hate to admit it, a tear could be seen running down my face as her father put her hand in mine. God am I a sap.

Father Ken, the resident pastor at the church performed the ceremony. My godmother read the Old Testiment reading from Genesis 2:18-24, “The Two Become One Body”. A Friend of the family read the second reading from the New Testiment from Corinthians 12:31 – 13:8a. The words from this reading have probably been written in many a greeting card, but the lines that struck us most were:

“Love is patient, love is Kind.
it is not jealous, is not pompus,
it is not inflated, it is not rude,
it does not seek its own interests,
it is not quick tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing,
but rejoices with the truth.

It bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails.”

For those of you don’t who know a Roman Catholic Ceremony, they are long. By the time you get to the actual marriage ceremony, you’re quite drained, but for us all we could do is gaze into each others eyes and smile as the pastor, who seemed to know us well from previous meetings, brought up issues we may face in the future… We knew the “I do’s” were coming, but just didn’t know when. On the first response, we both said “Yes” and quickly corrected ourselves to “I do”. Then it was time for us to each respond with our intentions, “I, Kevin Michael, take you Victoria Lauren…”. Emotions took hold, and again my eyes welled up and in a quick burst of nervous laughter I responded as I should. With all the planning and pre-wedding “stuff”, I never thought this moment would be such an emotional..

As I write to you, I’m sitting on the balcony of my room at the Hilton Waikaloa Beach Resort on the Big Island of Hawaii, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I hate long plane rides, but the 6 hours to L.A., 3 hour layover, and 6 more hours to the islands was well worth the wait.

It’s so beautiful here; it has been in the 80′s since we arrived. Upon arriving, we checked into our rooms and went on a long walk around the resort. Although we had both been up for 20 hours by this point, I think we were both stunned by the beauty, even in almost pitch black. On Monday, we explored the resort some more in daylight, did a little shopping (Victoria wouldn’t allow me to keep her away from shopping the whole trip), and ate at a small restaurant on the lagoon. Today, we cruised down the west coast of the island and visited the “Painted Church”, a circa 1800′s Roman Catholic church with the interior all hand painted by the natives. It was quite beautiful. Being the avid coffee drinker that I am, We also visited and toured a few coffee farms; Kona is quite famous for its coffee. It was neat to taste fresh coffee and see how it’s grown and processed. Victoria hates coffee, but she actually liked some of the different varieties we tasted.

We also visited a couple of the bay side towns, I can’t remember their name cause they all sound like kalualuakamukadunka to me.. lol. We spent the evening in Kona I’ll post pictures when we come back. Tomorrow (Wednesday) we’re going to relax and spend the day in the lagoon and then go to a luau in the evening. Then we’re going to hike up to the Volcano on Thursday. Friday we’ll probably visit the rain forest side of the island and then on Saturday we’re going Snorkeling on a day long cruise. We plan to head back down south on Sunday before our evening flight.