If you’re planning a destination elopement wedding, you’re in the right place. We’re giving you our top tips for planning your destination wedding or elopement and sharing the lessons we learned following our recent launch event of With Love Elopements in beautiful Palm Cove, Far North QLD.
What would we know?
If you’re new round here, we’re Jamie and Cara, the Celebrants behind With Love Elopements. We recently announced that in addition to offering our highly sought after elopement experiences in Brisbane, we’ve now expanded our services to also include the beautiful Cairns Northern Beaches!
What better way to get the BEST tips on planning a destination elopement or wedding, than from wedding professionals who specialise in elopements AND have also planned a destination event!
To celebrate this milestone, we hosted a fabulous launch at the stunning Nu Nu Restaurant beachfront at Palm Cove, with a beachside dining experience that captured the essence of an incredible destination wedding.
You can hear about our event here: With Love Elopements expand to Far North QLD.
By planning and hosting this event, we learned SO much—lessons we are eager to share with couples planning their own destination weddings or elopement. Whether you’re dreaming of a tropical beach ceremony with all your family and friends, or a more intimate elopement, here’s our 8 top tips to help you plan the best destination wedding experience.
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Consider a weekday wedding for flexibility, venue availability and savings
We booked our event on a Saturday, thinking that some guests flying in for the occasion would stay for a night or two, and being a weekend, they wouldn’t need to take any time off work. We were wrong!
To our surprise, most guests stayed for at least three or four days, with some extending their stay to a full week and making the most of a holiday at this beautiful tropical area. Looking back, booking our event on a weekday would have worked equally as well, and would have given us more flexibility and potential savings.
Reduced Minimum Spend – Many venues offer lower minimum spends on weekdays, to reflect less costs to them with staff penalty rates.
Privacy – A weekday wedding also means less people are around, giving you more privacy.
Availability – With weekends often booked out for events, you also have a greater choice of dates when choosing a weekday wedding.
Cute Idea – You could tie the knot on your anniversary or another special day.
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Consider local suppliers for wedding styling & Hire
When planning a destination wedding, one of the challenges you’ll likely face is the luggage weight limit for your travel. You’re limited by how much you can carry.
We recommend working with local suppliers for your wedding styling, particularly heavier and larger items. Local florists, decorators, stylists and rental companies can provide you with quality decor that fits your vision and the local aesthetic, saving you having to squeeze everything into your luggage, within your airlines weight limit.
Engaging local suppliers also give you the added benefit of not having to set everything up yourselves, allowing you to relax and enjoy your special day.
For lightweight items like nameplates, napkins, signs, charger plates and table decor that won’t take up too much room or weight in your suitcase, by all means bring them with you (we did!).
However, heavier items—like the gold cutlery for our event, which was much heavier than I’d anticipated making them challenge to transport by plane with luggage weight limits.
Using local suppliers also ensures you get the styling you want without the added stress of packing, hauling, setting up, not to mention you can leave the packing away and cleaning up to the experts, while you head off to your after party!
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For destination beach weddings and elopements consider the comfort of your guests
For our beachside dining event, one thing I hadn’t considered was that all the guests (ourselves included) would be kicking off their shoes and their feet in the sand. In hindsight, it would have been a great idea to have a cute sign and a basket for guests to pop their shoes into for comfort. This little addition would help guests fully immerse in the beach vibe.
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Book an experienced elopement Celebrant
One of the most important decisions you’ll make when planning your destination wedding is choosing a Celebrant who understands how to bring your wedding vision to life, factoring in your preferences for your ceremony, e.g. location, privacy, shade, accessibility for guests, confidentiality of your marriage etc.
Experienced destination elopement Celebrants—like yours truly—can be a huge asset in supporting you through the day and ensuring everything goes smoothly.
We assist couples based in Queensland, interstate and overseas with the ceremony planning, including handling all the legal marriage paperwork that’s required to get married here in Australia. We’ll also provide you with valuable tips and advice to ensure your wedding day is as stress-free and enjoyable as possible.
Choosing an experienced Celebrant, that genuinely cares about you having a wonderful experience, is truly an asset, giving you great peace of mind in the lead up to you special day.
BONUS TIP: Book key wedding vendors early – Celebrants can only be in one place at a time. As highly sought after Marriage Celebrants, once each of us are booked, we have to decline further requests on that date and timeslot.
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Choose your dream location to elope in Queensland
In addition to having a beautiful backdrop for your wedding, consider accessibility and the kind of atmosphere you want for your ceremony.
Brisbane elopements – From lush botanical gardens to romantic lakeside spots, Brisbane has so many stunning spots for your ceremony to take place.
You can view descriptions of a variety of absolutely stunning Brisbane’s elopement locations here.
Cairns Northern Beaches elopements – A destination that offers a choice of gorgeous beaches, parallelled with lush rainforest.
If you’re looking for a laid-back beach ceremony or a secluded tropical backdrop, you can view our descriptions and images of each Northern beach suburb here.
For our launch event, Palm Cove provided an ideal beachside setting, a relaxed ambience and exquisite dining options, but we know that it’s essential to choose a location that aligns with both your vision and the logistics of guests getting there. Consider proximity from accommodation, if transport will be needed, and weather contingencies when choosing your destination wedding venue.
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Invest in trusted vendors for a stress-free experience
When planning our event, we initially booked a local Cairns Photographer who was new to us. Unfortunately, the experience wasn’t good, with a lack of enthusiasm apparent and unresponsive to emails, shortly before our event, we were advised by that Photographer, that he would only be capturing shots of us and our guests between 6pm-7pm – while we were all eating! Way to get the worst photos ever!
Ok, so from a distance the photos may have been ok, however eating photos are never a good look and it’s a well-known thing in the world of weddings, that wedding Photographers always request their meal break while the couple and their wedding party are eating, as eating photos don’t make for flattering images.
Thankfully another experienced and talented photographer Samantha from The Infinity Collective, who we know well and had previously worked alongside multiple times, stepped in as our Photographer at short notice. They did an incredible job, going way above and beyond and even capturing video for us too.
Lesson learned, we should have booked our trusted and reliable Photographer in the first place.
Pro Photography Tip: Know who you’re booking: When shortlisting and booking your Photographer, check ‘which’ Photographer will actually be shooting your day.
Over recent years there’s been a surge of Photographers ‘on the hustle’ accepting no end of bookings, then searching for an available Photographer to fill the spot – ‘the spot’ being to capture the best day of your life. We see many galleries by many Photography brands and trust us, the quality of the photos from the same brand can vary drastically depending on which photographer is shooting.
The good news is we have established relationships with local wedding professionals, many we’ve personally hired for our own shoots and events (like our launch party featured here), and we won’t hesitate to recommend suppliers that we’ve had a wonderful experience with, and our couples have to.
Photography Tip: Don’t skimp: You’ll want to remember every detail of your destination wedding, so don’t skimp on photography and videography. Working with experienced photographers can help you capture not only the ceremony but the stunning destination too. We are so happy with the photos from our event, and your memories will be breathtaking when captured by talented professionals too!
YES! We will happily provide you recommendations of fantastic Photographers!
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If possible, plan your destination elopement or wedding during the months when the weather is at its best.
Brisbane elopements – We perform elopements in Brisbane year-round. Wet weather is rarely a concern for elopement weddings (and if it is we simply switch to the sheltered space nearby all our favourite elopement spots.) In the Summer months Brisbane can get storms, most commonly in December January and February, although they are possible from September through to March.
However, the beauty of an elopement is in the event of wet weather, it’s easy-peasy to relocate an elopement to an undercover space nearby when there’s a total of 5 or so people (including the Celebrant, the couple and their witnesses).
Here’s a heartwarming elopement story of a couple who laughed off the rain and that did exactly that!
Cairns Northern Beach elopements – With the tropical climate of Cairns Northern Beaches you can greatly increase your chances of beautiful weather by choosing to wed between April and November, or even between May and October, when rainfall is low, skies are blue, and the temperature is beautiful!
If you are planning on having your wedding outside of these dates, while the sun may still be shining for your outdoor ceremony, it’s always wise to have a backup plan in case of rain for your peace of mind.
One of the many beauties of small intimate elopements is how easy it is to be flexible and relocate to a wet weather plan if need be.
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Make restaurant reservations and sight-seeing bookings for your group of guests, before and after your day.
Destination weddings offer the perfect opportunity to extend your celebrations and immerse yourself in the beauty of the local area and its fine restaurants.
Restaurant bookings for larger groups generally need to be made well in advance, consider a pre-wedding welcome dinner, and/ or a recovery brunch the next day.
Brisbane elopements – Guests will enjoy exploring the beautiful subtropical Brisbane Botanic Gardens, a boat cruise along the Brisbane River, cooling off in the extensive swimming pools of South Bank Parkland, or hiking to the Summit of Mt Coot-tha to take in the sweeping city views.
Cairns Northern Beach elopements – Guests will enjoy Far North Queensland’s tropical charm, beaches, and proximity to the Great Barrier Reef for a sunset sail or snorkelling, making it a great place to see sights and book tours.
Travelling from overseas to elope in Australia?
Here’s some bonus tips from a bride that recently travelled internationally to elope:
- If honeymooning right after your elopement, consider mailing some items back home after your wedding. Especially if some holiday shopping may be on the cards. This couple shared they had to put extra jackets on at the airport to meet the airlines luggage allowance after doing this with holiday shopping
- Check with airlines about bringing your wedding dress/ suit bag on the plane as carry on, or if these need to be checked in. If you aren’t flying directly, make sure you also check restrictions for any domestic transfers too.
- If it’s just the 2 of you eloping, consider having pre/post celebrations with friends and family so they don’t feel like they are missing out.
Your destination wedding can be a dream come true – we hope these tips from our recent launch event and our valuable experience as elopement Celebrants help guide you through the process.
From considering a weekday wedding to choosing the perfect location and working with trusted wedding vendors, there are plenty of ways to make your destination wedding stress-free, memorable and thoroughly enjoyable.
If you’re ready to start planning your destination wedding in tropical North Queensland, we’d love to help you create the wedding of your dreams!
Contact us at With Love Elopements and let’s start planning your special day!