A Chapel Built With the Resort
The chapel opened in November 1991, when the resort was called the Grand Hyatt Wailea. Today the property is Grand Wailea, a Waldorf Astoria Resort.
The resort’s original developer, Takeshi Sekiguchi, built it around six elements of Maui: water, light, sound, flowers, trees and art. The design architect was Previn Desai of CDS International.
What Does the Chapel Look Like?
Architectural historian Don J. Hibbard describes a clapboard chapel with a slender spire over a Greek-cross plan, set on its own island. Inside are dark wood walls, high vaulted ceilings and four wall-sized stained-glass windows.
A pond and gardens surround it. The resort lists the chapel at 1,720 square feet, with room for 49 guests.
Who Designed the Stained Glass at Grand Wailea?
Yvonne Cheng was born in Surabaya, Indonesia, in 1941 and raised in Jakarta. Dutch schools there trained her in classical drawing.
After the political upheaval of 1965, she and her husband left Indonesia for Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1967 they moved to Honolulu, where she took a batik class at Bishop Museum and began painting Hawaiian women in patterned textiles.
A Painter Asked to Work in Glass
Sekiguchi moved in the same social circle and heard she was painting Hawaiian women. He commissioned stained glass for his planned chapel and a mosaic for the resort interior. She had never worked in either medium.
He flew her to Italy to meet Bisazza, the Italian mosaic company. She reviewed her watercolor designs with the company and toured its mosaic factory. Published accounts do not name the studio that fabricated the chapel glass.
What the Windows Show
In Cheng’s own description, the windows show Hawaiian women in white and cream robes with bands of red, set among green hills and a river. In one panel, three women gather water. In another, a warrior watches a procession of women on a hillside.
Her mosaic near the main dining room shows three robed women among banana leaves. Looking back on the commission in 2020, she said, “I’m amazed that I did it.”
A Chapel That Stayed
In 2019, the resort’s expansion plans proposed removing the chapel. Revised plans filed later that year kept it.
The Maui Planning Commission approved the scaled-back project in March 2026, with the chapel left in place.
Can You Visit the Chapel?
The chapel is a working wedding venue on resort grounds. Check with Grand Wailea before planning a visit.
Sources
SAH Archipedia — Grand Wailea Resort Hotel (Don J. Hibbard, Buildings of Hawaii)
Matador Network — interview with Yvonne Cheng, January 2020
Yvonne Cheng — biography
Grand Wailea — Wailea Seaside Chapel venue details
Grand Wailea — Our Moʻolelo (resort history)
The Maui News — Grand Wailea scales back its expansion, December 2019
Maui Now — Grand Wailea expansion plans advancing, March 2026
Jolanta’s Feedback
Some places hold more than they show.
A small chapel built for promises. Windows made by someone who had never worked in glass.
She said yes before she knew how.
Each morning the light still moves through her Hawaiian women and settles on the floor where people stand to begin something new.
What we make with an open heart keeps giving long after we step away.
Wailea has many quiet stories like this one, and I enjoy sharing them.
Jolanta Frazier, REALTOR®, Broker R(B) · Coldwell Banker Island Properties · 808.818.8313
Check out this article next
