Beach weddings can be a romantic wedding and honeymoon destination wrapped in one. For those who want the elements of a tropical setting, beach weddings are a perfect choice! If you’re not as lucky to have the perfect beach in your back yard, popular locations include; Hawaii, Florida, and Mexico. Or if you want to go a bit further, even Carribean destinations like Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Jamaica and the Virgin Islands can be perfect settings.

Aside from the beautiful location, Beach weddings have to be planned carefully. You can’t forget to take into account the weather; windy beaches, rainy afternoons, hurricane season,  and possible heat depending on the time of day. Other aspects people don’t think about when having a beach wedding are; sinking chairs in the sand, sand in shoes and possibly in the food. The surrounding environment such as; mosquitos, traffic- if beach is close to a public road, and if you are having your wedding on a public beach then you also may have a crowd of locals watching. When planning a Beach Destination Wedding keep in mind that most destination weddings are small affairs, usually less than 50 guests. You may want to consider having just the ceremony on the beach with a few close friends and family, and then moving to an indoor location for the wedding reception.

There are many decorations and ideas that you can incorporate to give the reception area a perfect beach themed setting without having to be outside on an actual beach. Choose white or pastel linens, tealights or tiki torches, tropical floral centerpieces or tropical potted plants like banana trees, exotic birds, or nautical themed centerpieces. In addition, you can decorate the table center pieces to be completely edible with brown sugar or chocolate pebbles to replicate the sand and add chocolate seashells and starfish to finish off the look. Don’t forget to tell your guests to ‘dig in’!