the story behind sunshower weddings

Sunshower weddings actually began as a venue! In 2013, Kate and her husband, Doug, started a Kona coffee farm - Sunshower Farms and began hosting events out of their home. Their first wedding was a small elopement in 2014 and in the years since then, Kate and Doug’s back deck (and the inside of their home) hosted over 100 weddings.

Those six years allowed them to save for a new venue space on the farm and in early 2020, they applied to the county for the permit. After over a year of negotiations with the county and neighbors, the permit application was denied.

But that wasn’t the end of the road for Kate’s work in weddings and events! From that permit denial, Sunshower Weddings was born! In 2021 Alison and Whitney were promoted from event staff/assistant coordinators to lead planners and we expanded our planning and coordination services to new venues! And then in early 2022 we brought Cami on board, first as an assistant and now as a lead planner. That same year, Whitney spread her wings and started to work for herself in her own company!

Our start as a venue is the reason you will see in many of our testimonials references to “the farm” and so much about Kate specifically. Before 2021, Whitney and Alison were members of the staff team but did not plan with clients directly. But as soon as Hawai’i began to reopen after Covid, our team and our offerings expanded and we all coordinate our own weddings. We expanded from a one-woman show to a team and our systems, workflow, and events have just gotten better and better since then!

Since January 2022, we also expanded the team with adding admin support! First by hiring one of our past brides, Molly. Molly went on to work with advancing sustainable programming to Big Island communities and so we hired another one of our past brides, Sarah! Sarah is both an admin and an assistant planner for all of us and works with every single client in some capacity.

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