Emily & Jason

KONA SALT FARM //  KAILUA-KONA // BIG ISLAND HAWAI’I

WHY DO YOU WANT YOUR WEDDING CAPTURED ON VIDEO?

To have a beautiful reminder of this day, and something that we can watch together each year on our anniversary

WHY DID YOU PICK ME?

The pacing, storytelling, and especially the coloring of your final film examples

WHAT DO YOU DO? HOW DO YOU SPEND YOUR DAYS?..WHAT’S IMPORTANT IN LIFE?

We value travel, trying new things, having fun together, and the natural beauty of Earth. You can read the brief notes of our time together here: https://www.theknot.com/us/ashley-coolman-and-teddy-fischer-mar-2023/our-story

Our favorite time together recently was the 9 months we spent living on the Big Island of Hawai’i. While here we snorkel, SCUBA dive, hike, make smoothies from fresh fruits, make friends with goats, spend time in nature, and admire every sunset. At home in San Francisco we like to explore the city, go for hikes, go to concerts and theatre performances, play boardgames, hang out with our dogs, read, and play video games. On adventures we like to explore new cities, ski and snowboard, SCUBA, and make our plans 1 day at a time (literally sometimes the only thing we plan is accommodations for the first night).

EMILY & JASON’S KONA SALT FARM WEDDING.

I planned the proposal for months beforehand. My mother had 2 family heirloom rings that I could pick from — one gold and the other platinum. I picked the platinum diamond ring that belonged to my paternal great grandparents because I felt the style of the ring suits Ashley’s personality better. (She agrees.) She’s quiet with strangers, but sparkles and shines with friends.

I knew I wanted to make the proposal memorable, and to capture it on video so that we could enjoy watching it again whenever we wanted.

To make it memorable, I decided that on top of a ski mountain would be the most magical place (it’s a favorite hobby for both of us).

To capture it on video, I bought a clamp to attach my phone to a tree. But I couldn’t try it out for the first time during the proposal (she’d get immediately suspicious if I started setting up extra gear), so I brought it with us on a trip a few weeks beforehand to “try it out” and “see if we like using it”. During the test run Ashley did think I was being a weirdo, but that’s par for the course. Success — I had a ring, a location, and a video setup that wouldn’t be quite as suspicious.

We were going to be traveling to Emily’s family home in Ohio for Christmas, and we were planning a short trip to Mammoth Mountain for skiing before traveling the rest of the way. This was it. I called her parents and her brother to let them know I was planning to propose, and asked them to support us. I learned on that call that her parents had made bets with their friends that I was going to propose the year prior while we were in Funchal, Portugal — so they were incredibly excited and encouraging (though jokingly bummed about having lost the bet).

I proposed at the top of Mammoth Mountain on December 22, 2019. It’s a tradition of ours to start every ski day by taking a bottle of champagne up the mountain, finding a spot in the trees near the top, popping the bottle and finishing it before we start our day. So after I set up our “cool new phone clamp so we could finally get a video of our tradition”, we popped the bottle at 9am, and I pulled out the ring and proposed. She said yes, of course. We fell over in the snow laughing. We drank the bottle and then had the best day skiing.

THIS VENUE? WHY THIS PLACE ABOVE ANYWHERE ELSE?

We wanted to return to the Big Island and share our love of this place with our closest friends and family. We picked March hoping for some whale sightings at the tail end of whale season (pun intended). We like keeping things casual and fun, so food trucks at the beach felt right! We really liked the vibe at Kona Salt Farm.