The girls checking out the silent auction, and placing a couple bids!

The Sustainable Coastlines 1^st Annual Fundraiser on February 9^th at the Elks Lodge proved to be a huge success. The night-featured celebrity Hawaii Five-0 star Alex O’Loughlin, a Marine Debris Fashion Show, Silent Auction, and Local bands jamming the night away. UMU is very honored to add Sustainable Coastlines to our growing family.  We really love their fresh, young, hip way of life and their passion for protecting our beaches. This event was a perfect representation of this.  Check out the Sustainable Coastlines website: www.sustainablecoastlineshawii.org for more photos from the event.

A great sport in the fashion show.

Sustainable Coastlines main goal is to educate the community to care for the coastlines through hands on beach clean ups.  Although this non-profit has done many great things for Oahu’s beaches and coastlines, the battle is far from over.  This event helped raise awareness of what Sustainable Coastlines has accomplished in the past two years.

 The First Annual Fundraiser raised over $14, 000 for Sustainable Coastlines (more than double their goal).  It was an amazing event with a network of talented like-minded individuals who know how to have a good time. We are already looking forward to next year’s fundraiser. We will keep you posted! 

The boys living it up on the lanai

Monday was a great partnership between several like-minded organizations gathered for a day of giving back in He’eia.  We partnered with Pili Hawaii and Pacific Catering to provide delicious locally sourced lunch for Kaiser Permanente’s annual day of service.

Loving logistics like we do, UMU had fun working with Kaiser staff to plan for the organization of the big day and distribution of  lunch to their employees working at 4 different sites in He`eia.  From the mountain to the ocean, we assured everyone was happy and satiated with Chef Mark “Gooch” Noguchi’s delicious and healthy lunch bentos.  Thanks to Pili Hawaii for all of your efforts, and a special thanks to Moumen, his boys, and Pacific Catering for your support! We are looking forward to many more collaborations with our new family.

Hey folks, just an update on our progress for Sustainable Coastlines Fundraiser.  Alex OLoughlin from Hawaii Five-O will be taking us through the evening with some great live music by Discord & Rye and Cynth & the What’s His Faces!  Things are starting to come together for the Marine Debris Fashion Show; if you want to showcase your fashion talents you can post a photo of your work and how to contact you on Sustainable Coastlines facebook site.  We are also excited about the progress on the silent auction, if you’d like to donate an item you can contact Erin O’Connor at aloha@undermyumbrella.com.  Finally, just come to the event!  You can purchase tickets or tables here.  We’d love any support you can give to help Sustainable Coastlines continue their amazing efforts to clean up our coastlines.  In the past two years they have organized nearly 4,000 volunteers who have worked together to remove 27,454 pounds of garbage from our beaches!  Try imagining your local beach with all that trash on it!  We hope to see you all February 9^th at the Elks Club in Waikiki!

International Surfing Day prompts beach cleanups

Celebrating Francisco and Jennifer at the Halekulani

While we were on break, we weren’t fully on break.  UMU staff members helped to create a few  memorable experiences that we felt lucky to be apart of.  Once day Erin was putting final touches on an engagement party and the next Adam was manning the set-up and logistics for a beautiful country wedding.

Erin assisted with the  celebration of the engagement of Francisco and Jennifer at the Halekulani. An evening filled with family, friends, food, and music. A great way to celebrate the holidays. Francisco and Jennifer will be officially tying the knot in Columbia, but wanted to celebrate with their friends and family in Hawaii before hand and asked for our help. We enjoyed working with the Halekulani staff as always and loved seeing Jennifer relax with friends while we made sure things ran smoothly.  A beautiful couple with many more amazing things to look forward to in this New Year!

Another wedding was taking place under the direction of Adam on the North Shore across from the famous Pipeline.  Under beautifully lit tents, about 200 friends and family joined together on Sunday, December 29th for this rustic style wedding and UMU was again on board to assure things ran smoothly. Congratulations to Mele and Alex!  We captured a particularly amazing moment as Meleana danced the traditional hula for her guests.   The night was festive, fun and pretty relaxed–just the way it should be.  Hawaiian music played in the background, the imu pit was a main attraction and produced most of the food to feed all 200 attendees.

Mele dancing hula at her wedding

Under My Umbrella loves being able to share these moments with our clients and watch them relax while we do the work they shouldn’t worry about on special days such as these. No matter what the season, occasion or size of the task, our staff works hard so that these events are memorable for the right reasons. It was a busy Christmas season, but looking over our shoulder…it really is all about the love. Congratulations to the beautiful couples, may this next year be a blessed one for you and your new O’hana.