Partners In Paradise More And More Couples Are Escaping To Exotic Locations To Exchange Their Vows And Avoid The Pressures And Formality Of Traditional Weddings Ceremonies

A trip down the aisle isn’t enough for some bridal couples. They prefer to trip off and tie the knot in some exotic spot.

For some, it’s an opportunity to spend wedding funds on a vacation instead of an elaborate ceremony and reception, with maybe something left over to help buy a home. For others it’s a chance for a hassle-free, stress-free wedding with just a few special people in attendance.

Twenty-five years ago, couples were heading to a nearby beach, meadow or mountain to say their vows. Today’s couples are apt to flee to Hawaii, the Caribbean or Europe.

About 68,000 million American couples getting married for the first time in 1995 did so at a destination, more than double the number four years earlier, according to Modern Bride magazine.

Lida and Kyle Buckner opted for the Bahamas. “You can always count on the weather. It’s a special kind of place,” Lida says.

The Seattle couple had visited Paradise Island several years ago when Kyle joined Lida’s family on a vacation. “We had such a good experience there, we thought it would be a good place to go back to for a wedding,” Lida says.

In August 1995 the couple gave Lida’s mother, Robin Campbell the place and the date, February ‘96, and left the rest up to her. Campbell worked for six months to make it happen. “I couldn’t have asked for a better wedding coordinator than my mom,” Lida says.

Campbell had a Paradise Island hotel send pictures of possible wedding sites, arranged for flowers to be flown in and worked with the hotel’s bridal consultant for a steel band, a boat for the reception cruise and other details. She estimates she spent several hours a day for almost six months, logging every detail into her computer and running up “astronomical” phone bills.

Campbell says the hardest part was coordinating hotel rooms for their group of about 40 who were flying in from the East and West coasts.

Responding to the demand for destination ceremonies, resorts from Florida to Fiji have started offering one-stop-shopping wedding packages, in which they’ll arrange for just about everything.

Some foreign governments are changing their laws to make it easier for visitors to marry abroad. Antigua and Barbuda, for instance, now allow visitors to marry the day they arrive, instead of requiring a three-day wait as they used to.

Those in the wedding and travel industries agree that destination nuptials are a booming business segment.

Debbie Cravatta, owner of Paradise Weddings Hawaii, has been coordinating weddings on the Big Island since 1990. She’s seen her business grow dramatically - from 50 or 60 weddings her first year to 200 in 1996, and about 300 this year.

“People are getting away from the big family wedding,” Cravatta says. Some first-time brides and grooms with the means are deciding to spend perhaps $30,000 on a family trip that includes a wedding, rather than two years planning and arguing about a big church wedding.

Cravatta says a small wedding with eight guests can be arranged for about $1,500 including a minister or judge, champagne, small wedding cake, photographer, music and even a hair and makeup artist.

But a celebrity from the music world recently staged a black-tie ceremony and formal dinner on the beach, complete with fireworks and a 6-foot-tall wedding cake - at a likely cost of about $75,000, not including the private jet that flew in guests from the mainland.

Brian and Robin Magorty of Seattle had planned to marry at Lake Tahoe, then honeymoon in Hawaii. They ended up doing both on the Big Island.

Cravatta was hired to arrange their sunset wedding at water’s edge.

“We didn’t go whole hog,” Brian Magorty says. They had champagne on the beach, but their group of 10 had dinner in a nearby hotel dining room.

The savings over a big wedding at home were “significant” and the Magortys escaped a lot of hassles. “It was very low-stress compared to other weddings,” he says.

Cravatta says couples who decide to marry in a faraway place need to relinquish control of the event. “Give the coordinator your vision, and let that person make it happen.”

Our transient society and older brides and grooms are key to the popularity of destination weddings, says Kathy Chretien, publisher of The Bridal Connection in Portland, Ore. The magazine is geared to Pacific Northwest brides with wedding budgets in the $12,000 to $30,000 bracket.

Chretien says Sun River Resort near Bend, Ore.; Leavenworth, Wash., and inns along the Oregon coast are popular destinations.

One Portland parent came up with a wedding plan for her Kansas City daughter that brought wedding couple, family and friends together at Lake Tahoe for the ceremony. “They planned it around the Thanksgiving weekend. It’s wise use of time for families. Instead of two trips, they just have one,” Chretien says.

Families and friends weren’t involved at all when Sheri and Steve Greaves were married March 18 on Maui. “It was a second marriage for both of us,” Sheri says. They thought about a big ceremony, but with family in Kansas and assorted groups of friends, it would be difficult to keep the guest list manageable, and they didn’t want the stress.

Their hotel wedding coordinator arranged for a minister, a beachfront site, photographer and a picnic to follow. The coordinator and photographer were witnesses. “We spent our wedding day sitting around the pool. It was so stress-free,” Sheri says.

Disneyland provides a less tranquil but highly sought-after wedding experience. The popular Anaheim resort has been doing weddings at their Disneyland Hotel since 1955. Three years ago it added an in-park site next to Sleeping Beauty’s Castle - a site for groups of 20 or less.

While Disneyland’s wedding manager, Lisa Simpson, was being interviewed by phone at 9:55 a.m., she was watching a wedding outside her window. “As soon as the minister announces them husband and wife, Mickey and Minnie will start jumping up and down and congratulating them. Then they’ll pose for pictures,” she says, giving a play-by-play of the event.

Theme weddings, ranging from Cinderella and the Prince to Belle and the Beast, are popular in this park. “When the bride arrives in Cinderella’s glass coach ($1,600 rental) it’s awe-inspiring. It brings everyone to tears,” Simpson says.

Disneyland can arrange to have white doves released, (two for $250, a flock for $525) or a bubble machine to blow soap suds at the celebration.

Weddings inside the park cost $5,000, and that doesn’t include flowers. But a simple outdoor wedding with a group of eight can be held outside the park for $750, including a minister, taped music, and a two-tier wedding cake topped with Mickey and Minnie.

Theme weddings aren’t limited to Disneyland. Tammy Schneider, wedding consultant for the Coeur d’Alene Resort, says some golf buffs want to be married in the middle of a game - especially on the resort’s famous 14th hole, which features a floating green. They marry and finish their game. For traditionalists, the resort also has a chapel seating 25 overlooking the lake.

Exotic settings, a below-par game, Disney characters and careful coordinating can’t guarantee a perfect wedding.

As Lida Campbell headed down her palm-lined aisle in the Bahamas, the wind came up, blew potted palms into her path, and gave everyone a bad hair day.

Then there’s the couple who wanted a lucky wedding on the seventh day of the seventh month at 7 p.m. on the seventh tee of a golf course in Hawaii. Cravatta was the coordinator.

The golf course wouldn’t allow use of the seventh tee, but provided the third. Mid-ceremony the watering system ticked on, squirting directly under the bride’s gown.

Some menehune from the seventh tee must have done it.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: GETAWAY GUIDE Want to wed in Greece, the South Pacific or Big Sky Country? For help discovering everything from where to get a license to what wedding services are available, you might want to buy: “Romantic Wedding Destinations,” by Jackie Carrington (Innovanna Publishing, 200 pages, $24.95). If you can’t find a copy of “Romantic Wedding Destinations” in your local library or bookstore, call 1-800-577-9810.

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Susan Phinney Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Some information in this article came from The Associated Press.)