Hale Koa Hotel

We recently had our wedding in the Maile garden and our reception in the Laulima rooms. We were a little hesitant to use a DOD hotel for our wedding, but they offered 5 star service at a 3 star price and the venue is the prettiest on the island. Their staff is very professional and accommodating. They even went to the store to get soymilk a day before the wedding in a last minute request. We wanted to do a specialty drink that had about 15 ingredients and they were happy to do so and made pitchers of it to make for fast service at the bar. Their wait staff was extremely helpful and fun. We did the Luau buffet and without a doubt it was the best food we had on our entire trip to Oahu and Kona. We are still raving about it and our guests were very impressed and are still talking about how great their food was. They had a server make plates for us and brought us whatever we wanted to so we didn’t have to go up to the buffet. Their rooms are as nice as the Hilton next door, and their grounds are much prettier. We did our photos around the hotel grounds and the backdrops will make for breathtaking photos. They were flexible with checking in and checking out on the day of the wedding. Their barefoot bar has an awesome Mongolian dinner on Friday nights and we had our welcome reception at the barefoot bar. The venue is great, beautiful view, cheap drinks, and fast service. Our guests had an absolute blast and returned to the barefoot bar for an after-party when our reception wrapped up.

This is going to be a hard one to write. My fiancé is a former Marine (although you never are a former Marine) and the service we received was mixed. We first looked into the Hale Koa as they were the cheapest location to have a smaller wedding in Honolulu, Hawaii. When speaking to the Catering Manager, Dora, she informed us of dates that were available for a range of guests. Since my family is is Maui and my husband's family is in Ohio, we really did not know how many were going to be RSVP'ing. We invited over 150 but said "who knows, it could be more or like less than 75 depending on who will be able to come." Even hopping from the island of Maui to Oahu, isn't cheap, and not everyone can afford the flight and hotels. So we booked the place, site unseen. I've seen pictures and all the spaces were beautiful, so I wasn't worried there. A couple months later, we flew to Hawaii for vacation and stopped at the Hale Koa to view the sites. They stuck is in a room that max capacity was like 75!!! Even though we told them that we could expect over 150! And the rooms were 4 separate rooms connected together in a long awkward rectangle with low ceilings. She then said, if we plan on having a photobooth, we lose a round table of 8 seats. If we plan on having a favor table, we lose another round table of 8. Just continuously cutting down our numbers. We were extremely unhappy and paid an extra $150 to switch the ballroom location to a bigger site with more flexibility. Moving forward a few months, we get to the details of the wedding, and mind you there are no printed RULES & REGULATIONS ANYWHERE. I am asking the millions of questions I can think of because whenever I think of something, she replies with a “No there are not a list of questions, rules, regulations we answer questions on a case by case scenario” This includes FEES! These were NOT discussed or signed for in ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM. Fees like: Throwing petals=$100 clean up fee. Sparklers are not allowed (my sparklers). Ordering chairs to be delivered =$150 fee. How do you know what you can and cannot do, unless you think of it and ask? Then on the day of the rehearsal, no one was going to be available to walk us through. While going through the rehearsal, we were taking a bit longer, and I tried my best to rush everyone, but guess who showed up to the rehearsal, not to help us, but to tell us that there is a wedding later and they will be setting up and we needed to clear the garden for them. Wedding day comes along and things that we talked about and placed in the contract were not done. I told them to cut up all my cake and serve it and it was not, it was boxed. They placed table cloths down, even though they knew I had a rental company coming that would be dropping cloths. When the chair rental company came with extra chairs, they asked where they could possibly store it and the banquet captain said “idk just put it over there”. My uncle who is a banquet captain in a hotel in Maui, was appalled. He said he would never treat his clients this way, and that as a banquet captain, he expected to have things done as he would have done. I then told him it was a military hotel and that It was really cheap to book it and he said that that was probably why the service is mediocre. They are not here to appease to the clients, they act like it's more of a favor to us. Other than that, the venue is beautiful, the private garden area was nice and serene for an intimate ceremony.

All I can say is amazing! We had our wedding ceremony at Maile Garden and Waikiki ballroom for reception. Working with Courtni and the entire team has been great. The staff were very friendly, polite, and helpful . The food was unbelievable! I heard NO complaints and only compliments on how wonderful the meal was on that evening. This hotel is simply wonderful, simple as that. Amazing people, great service and delicious food! Highly reccommended!

We stayed at the Hale Koa for our wedding night and it was amazing! The bedrooms are so nice, and the view from the lanai was beautiful! The giant banyan tree in the center of the lobby is gorgeous!