Tourists scramble to change wedding plans after Hurricane Lowell
By Kristen Consillio
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KAUAI, Hawaii (KITV) — Instead of celebrating her daughter’s dream wedding on Kauai, Beverly Bonney’s family is now scrambling to reschedule the celebration.
Dozens of family members and friends from across the country were supposed to fly in in about two weeks. That’s before Hurricane Lowell devastated the island.
“All of us all — 40 of us — at this point we’re still trying to make arrangements,” she said.
The family had rented two beach houses for an intimate ceremony on the south shore where an entire neighborhood was destroyed by the storm.
“The place that we were planning on having the wedding, they said, ‘It’s a disaster area. You can’t even reach it by road,'” Beverly said.
And now they are trying to get refunds and plan everything from scratch.
“People are going to lose money,” she said. “Some people are being told that they’re not going to get their airfare returned. Some people are told, ‘Well, you need to still come.'”
All while trying to figure out what’s happening on the Garden Isle.
“We were also getting conflicting information, ‘Oh, you know we weren’t touched. You know everything’s fine over here. The sun is shining.’ So it was very hard to navigate how bad it actually was,” she added.
State leaders have asked tourists to stay away from Kauai while the island recovers — a sentiment Beverly and her family embrace.
“We understand the suffering that is happening for people who live there and now is not the time to go,” she said. “We love the island. We love the people and hopefully in May, it’ll be a good time for us to go and celebrate love and life and move forward.”
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