You’ve decided to take romance all the way and fly off for an exciting beach destination wedding.  While it is different and original, more and more couples are going off to exotic locales and getting married on the beach. What could be more thrilling?  Here are some ideas to go with your beach theme.  After 15 years in the wedding planning business I know there are many details to address.  These ideas can help with your beach wedding with the invitations, ceremony, and reception.

Beach Wedding Invitations

Wedding invitations is one of the areas that couples end up consistently paying too much for.  You can save an incredible amount by doing invitations yourself.  What could be better than a photo invitation of you and your groom at the beach?  You can write in the sand a message like, “Hope you can join us for….your date”, with the two of you smiling over the writing.  You can always grab some shells and a bit of sand to include in the envelopes of your initiations.

Beach Wedding Decor

You can decorate guests’ chairs on the beach for the ceremony.  You can attach the seats for your guests with a string of shells, or drape a starfish in the center of the chair back, or use a sand dollar and alternate with starfish.  Do this on only the aisle seats as that is what will show in your wedding photos.

Another good idea for beach weddings is to keep your guests comfortable in the heat.  5 gallon buckets filled with water bottles can be decorated with white gauze material, or the color of your wedding.  2 yards can be wrapped around and tied in a bow and placed at the end of the chairs at the beginning of the aisles.  This way every guest will pass them and groomsmen can offer them as they are seating people.

Another great beach wedding ceremony idea is to offer small palm leaves as fans.  This really is helpful to keep guests cool as well as add to the charm and theme of your beach wedding.  Your guests have made many arrangements to travel with you for your special day; you want them to feel that you have thought of their every comfort.

Getting married these days a bride and groom have so many more options than just a religious site or courthouse.  Nowadays couples get married just about anywhere.  I’ve had brides that have been married at major league baseball games, on ships; I even had a couple get married at a rodeo.  Point being, you can be as creative as you’d like.  So if you want a fairytale Cinderella type wedding or something more unconventional, you can arrange to have your wedding just about anywhere. 

Beach weddings have become really popular over recent years, with many couples opting to escape to lush, tropical surroundings for their special days. Most choose to have some of their close friends and family members gathered around them on the warm, sandy beach, with the lapping waves of the turquoise sea as their background.  This gives everyone attending a great break and a mini-vacation.  What’s nice is the entire group has more opportunities to bond, which makes the whole wedding more intimate.  It also makes the wedding celebration go on over a few days which traditional weddings don’t get to experience.

The popularity of beach weddings has forced designers to supply a full range of specific beach wedding dresses.  There are now so much more available for these joyous occasions. If you are having your ceremony in the hot midday sun, it is not always wise, comfortable, or practical to buy a traditional heavy bridal gown with all the trimmings. No one wants to pose for photos as a sweaty bride.  Having to cart around a heavy trained gown in a hot weather and environment could result in you fainting (I speak from experience on this one). Still you want a dress that completes the fantasy you’ve always had about how you would look in your wedding day.  After all, your dress is one of the biggest parts of the day.  

Designers and retailers have realized that weddings are not what they used to be, and people like to use their imagination more and do some pretty wild things as part of the ceremony wedding dress on your day.  This is where the range of elegant and highly suitable beach weddings dresses come in. You will find some incredible beach wedding dress styles, which are both classy and practical.  Many brides opt for a three quarter length dress if not for themselves, for their beach wedding bridesmaid dresses.

You can enjoy wearing something light and cool for the ceremony, and still have the peace of mind that you look every bit the stunning bride. The simple elegance of some of the beach wedding dresses available today creates the perfect look for a hot, steamy, tropical beach wedding dress.

You’re likely planning to fly into a lush warm climate for your beach wedding.  Like so much of the research you do for your big day online, you will find a wide range of beach wedding dresses available online. You can choose from a selection of light, airy, yet stunning fabrics, and there are styles available to suit all shapes and sizes. You can also benefit from some really low prices on beach wedding dresses online. Always check the price of shipping though, some sellers can have outrageous fees in this area.

When buying a dress online you’ll want to figure in the cost of alterations as most dresses require it.  Rare is the occasion that you open a wedding gown or take one off the rack and it fits perfectly.  So you can shop online, save a considerable amount even with the added costs, and get the perfect look and at the perfect price!

For the Ultimate complete guide in Beach Destination Wedding Tips Click and See. OVER 100+ money saving, problem solving, fear relieving, and successful savings and useable practical solutions to the best beach wedding ever listed in one spot!

Here are some of the outtakes from the article written by Candice Shih:

“According to a national survey conducted by The Knot in March, 40 percent of brides said they have reduced their wedding budgets by about 16 percent, and 60 percent said their spending was proceeding according to plan.

“We’ll continue to see this going on, as long as the economy is going on” in this way,” said Anja Winikka, online editor of The Knot.

Another trend in the industry is longer engagements, as couples take time to save more money. The average length of engagements increased 26.6 percent from 12.4 months to 15.7 months from 2007 to 2008, a pattern Winikka expects will continue.

The best way to save on a reception, Winikka advised, is to cut the guest list. Knocking 10 people off means saving on catering, a centerpiece and 10 each of favors, linens and invitations.

Beth Slavin of Irvine has been planning lifecycle occasions including weddings for 14 years. She acknowledged the guest list can be where it gets tricky for the hosts.

“People who want to make a nice wedding, its budget and its guest cost,” she said. The guest list is “an emotional number — they want everybody there. And then there’s the reality. How much are they going to spend?”

If you search my archived blogs, this is a concept I re-visit often.  By reducing your guest list by 30 people (15 people and their guest of choice) you can easily save $1,000-$1,500 dollars.  The great thing about having a beach wedding or destination wedding is that your guest list reduces itself.  While you may invite 150 people it is likely that only 30% will be able to come.

I suggest sending invites to all the people you would normally invite if you were to have a traditional local wedding.  For the cost of the postage and invitations a great many feelings can be spared, and you are heading off anyone who might feel slighted.  It’s about taking the high road, and it’s something your parents are sure to appreciate.  The sometimes beneficial side effect is that some will send you a monetary gift just because they were included in your wedding plan, even though they cannot attend.

“The wedding industry is feeling it, too, and they’re willing to negotiate,” she said

Beach Wedding Photography

Wedding photographer John Marciniak of Long Beach has reduced his rates and now offers his services a la carte to meet couples’ budgets. Photographers who don’t do the same are in “serious trouble,” he said.

“In the last year, the cards are thrown in the air. There are no more rules,” said Marciniak, who now typically charges $750-$1,850 for albums and services.

He said he’s not going to be extremely profitable this year but considers it worthwhile to keep working so he can make contacts and have some fun, particularly with the destination weddings he’s booked.

Greg Goodwin, president of Anaheim-based Friar Tux, said he’s seeing customers shop around more, include fewer in their wedding parties and target lower price tiers.

Last year “people said, ‘Give me the best.’ Now people are saying, ‘I want to save my guys money,’” he said.

Rivaled only by the wedding dress, wedding photographers have more room in their budgets to negotiate than anyone else in the wedding industry.  There is simply so much competition and people are no longer willing to pay $40 per 5 X 7, or $12 per proof.  Digital photography has had the largest impact on this part of the industry.  I strongly suggest you purchase the jpegs of your wedding photos instead of prints.

You can take the disk to a camera shop, or use Ritz photo online and order any size prints you want for pennies on the dollar of what the photographer would charge.  In fact it is precisely places like Ritz Photo, and other professional photography stores that the photographers in the Wedding industry order your prints from.  This way you can pay $300-$500 for the disk and spend only $100 in prints that would more than cover all the copies and size prints you want for yourself, and your family.

Low-cost options

Beach Wedding Cakes

As the economy has struggled, grocery stores which can serve 100 people for less than $300, according to spokeswoman Lilia Rodriguez. More of Albertsons’ wedding clients are also opting to purchase a smaller wedding cake, accompanied by sheet cake to serve all their guests, she added.

This is a tip I have been using for years.  Once people see your smaller round 2-3 tier cake, they don’t care where their piece of cake comes from, only that it tastes good.  The far less expensive 3 tier round cake is suitable for photo’s and the traditional cutting of the cake and is all that is needed.

Beach Wedding Invitations

Another vendor, Paper Source, which has a store in Costa Mesa, introduced flat printing as a more affordable alternative to traditional letterpress printing for invitations in February. It’s already the company’s most popular choice by far and accounts for about half of all orders, said spokeswoman Carolyn Agnew.

I’ve put up a special web page devoted strictly to beach wedding invitations.  You may follow this link to open the page in a new window. 

http://www.squidoo.com/beachwedding-invitations

Beach Wedding Dresses

The frugality has been extended to wedding dresses as well. A sale of $99 dresses at The Dresser in Fullerton in February drew about 300 brides and their families. A sale of $50-$300 dresses at the Assistance League of Tustin in April didn’t cause quite the same frenzy but still saw success, with 37 out of 50 dresses sold in two days.

At the Assistance League, brides weren’t lamenting their budgets but just thrilled at their good fortune when they found their dream dresses at discount prices.

“I’m so lucky, I’m shaking,” said Wendy McIntyre, 41, of Costa Mesa as she paid $300 for a new dress valued at $1,500.

Beach Wedding Benefits

McIntyre said she and her fiancé, Gary Kipp, would rather buy a house than have a big wedding. A second wedding for both, they’re considering inviting 30 people for a ceremony on the beach.

Many of you have selected to have a beach wedding as your first wedding.  It certainly offers a sense of unity and intimacy that cannot be achieved in a standard local wedding.  Still, beach weddings present different problems for brides that a traditional wedding doesn’t bring.  Things like planning for bad weather, sand fleas, beach goers in their beach wear crashing your ceremony, or worse your reception.  The best set of information I have seen in one place that covers all of these fears, as well as all the regular wedding topics that encompass destination weddings.

The information page has a few more of the details and is certainly worth a read.  You will find it at:

The Ultimate All-Inclusive Beach Wedding Guide

I stumbled across a neat site while surfing the beach wedding sites available.  This particular company specializes in all inclusive packages.  They offer a goot spot to research in one place what is available in multiple locations.  It also lets you choose by sport or hobby, which is pretty neat.  As an adventurous beach wedding bride you can always use all the planning tools available. 

So you have already decided that you are getting away to someplace special for your big day.   I’ve had numerous clients over the years select Florida locations for their beach wedding.  Florida is weather wise a safe bet most of the year, if you go far enough south.  One of the great benefits of having your beach wedding in Florida is that it is easy to get flights year round from any city in the U.S. and flights are affordable as well as plentiful.  This is true unless you have the misfortune of choosing Thanksgiving, Christmas week, February break, Easter week, or spring break.  Avoid these dates at all costs, otherwise your costs will skyrocket, and the beach will be more crowded than ever.  The last thing you want is a beach full of wedding crashers.  (Incedently, the Ultimate Beach Wedding Guide gives strategies to combat this). 

If you want a beach wedding and a seperate, private honeymoon location this site is really helpful in searching for different locations, packages available, and activities you and your husband enjoy.  There are just as many beach wedding couples that are having their honeymoon right where their getting married.  But for those who aren’t, you will find this search tool pretty helpful.  If you do find a location that is good for you, and you are having a Florida beach wedding, be sure to check flights to your honeymoon destination out of MIA, (Miami International Airport).  While I wouldn’t recommend Miami as a good place to have your wedding, it’s airport services thousands of direct flights all around the world.

Here’s the link to the search site:

http://www.onewed.com/honeymoon-destination-wedding/

For the Ultimate complete guide in Beach Destination Wedding Tips Click and See. OVER 100+ money saving, problem solving, fear relieving, and successful savings and useable practical solutions to the best beach wedding ever listed in one spot!

Consisting of 322 individual islands, with at least 106 that are still uninhabited; Fiji is one of the best wedding destinations in the world. The climate in the islands is tropical and warm all year long.  This makes it very convenient for couples to plan their wedding at any time.   With trying to get a group of close friends or loved ones together for a destination wedding it helps for people to request non-peak time off work.  While Fiji is not for the tighter budgeted very young couple just starting out, it is ideal for others, and more than you may think.

Not just for the second wedding or mature bride and groom, Fiji can be for anyone who wants the ultimate getaway and complete privacy.  While it may sound unattainable, the cost for a two week all inclusive package for three couples is approximately ten to twelve thousand dollars.  Sounds like a ton, yet it’s half the cost of the average traditional wedding at home here in the states. 

With its pure beaches, truly see through clear turquoise blue waters it’s the visual we all get when we here the term, “tropic paradise”. Breathtaking beauty of nature, it is pure lavish heaven for any couple to be wed there.

In Fiji your wedding will be very private, casual or formal, serene and most of all, romantic. You can choose to have the wedding on the private beach that one of resorts offer.  Many of the resorts offer a traditional a Fijian wedding ceremony.

Definitely unconventional, most unforgettable and lovely of a beach wedding ceremony on the islands.  The couple is dressed in Fijian outfits. The sounds of the conch shells signal the arrival of the bride which is on the billi billi or a wedding raft. The bride is then escorted by Fijian warriors to the altar, which is on the white, soft sand on the beach, decorated with tropical flowers and palm leaves.

Regardless of the type of ceremony if your destination beach wedding takes you to Fiji it will be as gorgeous as a location gets.  Like any beach wedding the evenings are made special with the sunset in the background which makes the event much more lovely and romantic.

So if you’re searching for a destination for your beach wedding, put Fiji on your list.  It’s worth a little research.  Here’s a site with a few more great destination beach wedding spots: http://www.squidoo.com/ExcitingWeddingDestinations .  Besides if you decide against Fiji for your wedding it makes a terrific honeymoon spot.

You’ve decided to take romance all the way and fly off for an exciting beach destination wedding. While it is different and original, more and more couples are going off to exotic locales and getting married on the beach. What could be more thrilling? Here are some ideas to go with your beach theme. After 15 years in the wedding planning business I know there are many details to address. These ideas can help with your beach wedding with the invitations, ceremony, and reception.
Beach Wedding Invitations

Wedding invitations is one of the areas that couples end up consistently paying too much for.

You can save an incredible amount by doing invitations yourself. What could be better than a photo invitation of you and your groom at the beach? You can write in the sand a message like, “Hope you can join us for….your date”, with the two of you smiling over the writing. You can always grab some shells and a bit of sand to include in the envelopes of your initiations.

Beach Wedding Decor
You can decorate guests’ chairs on the beach for the ceremony. You can attach the seats for your guests with a string of shells, or drape a starfish in the center of the chair back, or use a sand dollar and alternate with starfish. Do this on only the aisle seats as that is what will show in your wedding photos.

Another good idea for beach weddings is to keep your guests comfortable in the heat. 5 gallon buckets filled with water bottles can be decorated with white gauze material, or the color of your wedding. 2 yards can be wrapped around and tied in a bow and placed at the end of the chairs at the beginning of the aisles. This way every guest will pass them and groomsmen can offer them as they are seating people.

Another great beach wedding ceremony idea is to offer small palm leaves as fans. This really is helpful to keep guests cool as well as add to the charm and theme of your beach wedding. Your guests have made many arrangements to travel with you for your special day; you want them to feel that you have thought of their every comfort.

Beach Wedding Reception Ideas
Decorating your beach wedding reception tables in your destination beach wedding theme can be very easy. The gauze can come in handy again. Cut a strip and lay in a circle in the center of the table. Sprinkle shells over top of the gauze and space glass votives around in a circular pattern around the table number. Try to keep with your beach wedding destination theme using tropical scented candles; mango, papaya, coconut, tropical breeze are all good choices.

At the reception, you can thread either a beautiful ribbon in your wedding colors or natural raffia through a sand dollar to use as a decoration to jazz up the table number stands or candle bases. Also, line the base of your gift table, head table, cake table or buffet table with real grass skirts – the raffia ones in natural or the green inexpensive type. Dress them up with the ribbons in your wedding colors, spacing bows every few feet or on all the corners and center.
For a complete guide to Beach Weddings visit:

Planning a beach wedding doesn’t have to be very expensive. In this article you will find  tips to save money when planning a wedding on the beach.  It’s easier to plan the perfect wedding on the beach than you might think. After 15 years in the wedding planning business I can share some secrets with you.  Save money when planning buy using these  a budget beach wedding with the following tips.

Some Budget Beach Wedding Tips : Basics

Start with the guest list.  Having a destination wedding will allow you to reduce the number of guests able to attend, and narrow your guest list to the immediate, “must be there”, guests.  You will find that most of these people are family.  You can always have a second reception after the wedding at home in a party type atmosphere .

For a complete guide to Beach Weddings visit:

Every problem, possible solution, travel, accomodations, reception, public beach solutions, licensure, …all fears and concerns are addressed!

It’s easy to fall into the trap of, “they invited us to their wedding”.  A large party after the fact can solve this problem.  With a buffet style catered party you won’t feel bad inviting those acquaintances that sort of “invite themselves” to your second reception, along with people you wanted there that couldn’t make it.
Click here for the absolute best trouble saving Budget Beach Wedding Tips!

A great way to save money on hotel lodgings and a reception site is to rent a large beach house on the ocean to have the reception. Have the ceremony on the beach behind the beach house. As bride and groom you can stay at a close upscale hotel with all the parents, where you and they will be more comfortable.  The wedding party can stay in the house during the wedding weekend. This way you can save money on hotel rentals which could add up to the amount that it costs to rent the beach house.  Your wedding party will appreciate that too.

Make sure that if you and your parents and in-laws are staying at a four star hotel, that you offer other attending family members a second choice.  A closely located three star hotel will give your guests an alternative that may be more in their price range.  In today’s economy it is more important than ever.

Planning your wedding day for the ultimate romantic tranquility. The last thing you want is lookie-loos and peddlers disturbing you and your guests.

Budgeting to be sure you don’t get in over your head. Otherwise you may end up with a box of seashells, plastic leis, and Frisbees. This is why the, Top 10 Beach Wedding Secrets is so valuable!

Finding the perfect beach wedding theme and wedding favors. The choices are endless. Lighthouse? Jetty? Pier? Sailboats?

The best time of day to have your ceremony and the absolute worst times to avoid.

How to choose the best wedding dress for your body type. Even if you want a more casual beach wedding dress or if you need a plus size beach wedding dress, how to pick the best one that’s flattering on you, so you can show your sexy curves in style!

Get the top 10 Beach Wedding Secrets that will save you so much hassle, extinguish your worst wedding fears, and enlighten you as to the best possible Beach Wedding  for yourself.

Beyond the weather, the number of guests able to travel, the financial strain of people in the bridal party, conflicting schedules of parties involved or attending, off-site vendors and services, but all those items pale in comparison to the one problem the bride later realizes…what shoes do I wear on the beach with my dress????


Beach weddings do tend to cause a dilemma for brides as far as shoes go. I’ve had couples decide to go barefoot, which raises the question of the wedding party’s footwear. I’ve even had

“Bridezillas”