Unique and original beach wedding ideas for everything from invitations and decorations to cakes and favors to beach wedding attire.
Here are some fun ideas for a beach wedding - whether a destination wedding in a tropical locale or close to home, how to have a wonderful beach themed ceremony and reception.
Beach Wedding Invitations
- Get the beach theme off to a good start by putting a small amount of white sand in each guest’s wedding invitation.
- Fun beach wedding invitations could resemble a vacation postcard with a photo of the bride and groom at the beach with the words, “Hope you’ll be here...” written in the sand.
Beach Wedding Decorations
- To decorate guests’ chairs on the beach, string garlands of mini starfish or sand dollars, or coral between seats to connect them.
- These beautiful Beach Wedding Table Numbers at Etsy as seen in the photo above are a great inspiration for a color theme for your beach wedding.
- Place four large rattan poles upright into the sand and drape white gauze over the top as a canopy for guests to sit under. Gauze is only about $5 a yard and comes in a variety of colors.
- Use decorative pieces of driftwood as place card holders for a beach wedding.
- Give each person a rattan palm leaf fan to stay cool.
- Thread either a beautiful ribbon or natural raffia through a sand dollar to use as a napkin ring.
- Use candles that smell like tropical fruit such as mango, papaya, coconut and kiwi.
- Have white galvanized buckets holding bottles of water in the sand for guests to take as they need.
- Line the base of the gift table, head table or buffet table with real grass skirts – the raffia ones in natural, not the cheap green paper ones.
- Use charms of sandals for wine or champagne glass markers at the wedding reception.
Beach Wedding Dresses and Attire
- Bridesmaids and groomsmen could wear beach wedding colors in shades of ocean green, sky blue, and sand beige.
- Fun beach wedding dresses include a crochet dress, a caftan, a halter dress, an off the shoulder dress or a mermaid (fitted skirt, long train) style dress.
Beach Wedding Favors, Cakes, Music and Other Details
- For a beach wedding cake, think key lime or pineapple or chocolate with a mango sauce.
- Consider having a wedding program fan so guests can cool themselves with it.
- Set the wedding march to a reggae beat and use Caribbean type instruments for the wedding music, such as a steel drum or a bamboo flute.
- Have the bride’s arrival announced by a conch shell horn.
- Decorate a wooden lobster trap with tropical flowers and use it as a money box or, for something more elegant, have envelopes left in a mother-of-pearl bowl.
- A boat captain's log book would make an interesting guest book for a beach wedding.
- Fun beach wedding favors to give guests would be a small bag of tropical flower bulbs like plumerias, or saltwater taffy.
- Avoid having a beach wedding in the afternoon, instead choose early morning or dusk so guests do not have to sit in the hot sun, and there will be less people using the beach.
From a citrus cake to ocean theme decor ideas to sand filled invitations, all of these beach wedding ideas are perfect to use at any type of outdoor or summer wedding and reception.
Copyright Gail Oliver. Contact the author to obtain permission for republication.
Gail Oliver - Gail is an author, writer and researcher. She has been quoted in magazines as diverse as Cosmopolitan and Maclean's. Gail writes on a ...
Join the Conversation