Maui Beach Weddings

Let's talk about the most popular place for a Maui wedding -- the beach. All of the beaches in Maui are considered public. Even though this is true, there are many beaches to which the public cannot get access, (unless they arrive by boat) because there is no access to the beach.

When the large resorts were built, the County usually required the developers to provide "access" to the beaches through their property. Usually a sign is posted indicating that public access is possible (or not possible) through a given corridor. If you know where these access points are located, you can often find beaches that are hidden behind a hill full on condos or hotels. This, of course, is what your Maui wedding planner should already have done: find the hidden beaches that you can use for your weddings.

What makes a good wedding beach?

We have a list of things that we use to determine which beaches are best. Is it normally crowded? There are many beautiful beaches like Kaanapali Beach which look at Coney Island on most days. Too many hotels on a beach will result in crowding, lots of running kids, snorkelers, etc. A wedding is best on a quiet, uncrowded beach.

Is the beach windy? There are many beautiful Maui beaches that are windswept most of each day. The north side of Maui has the best windsurfing beach in the world. That should tell you that you don't want to get married there. Maui has this condition as well on the beaches on the west side up near the Ritz Carlton, such as Ironwood or DT Fleming. We've have couples insist on having their wedding ceremony on some of these beaches (despite our warnings) and they usually find out the hard way what high winds can do their hair and putting sand in the air.

Will the beach have rain? When you are getting married on a beach, you can never be sure what you will get. But all of the Hawaiian islands have the same basic wind patterns. Most of the time, the tradewinds come in from the north so all beaches on the north and eastern sides of the islands will have to contend with this. The leeward side, or the south side of the island is where you'll find the least amount of rain. This is why we recommend that couples travel to a south Maui beach because the odds are in favor that they won't encounter a lot of rain.

We estimate that a third of the weddings we do on the west side of Maui will receive some rain, simply because it rains there more than on the south side. Couples often want to be married on the west side because it is close to their condo or hotel, and everything can go perfectly. But when it does rain, it can fog up camera and video lenses making it more difficult to get good quality images. I know of some photographers who will just not do weddings on the west side simply because they don't want to risk damaging their expensive cameras.

We have been doing weddings on the beach for seven years now, and we come prepared. We have small and large umbrellas. And we pick our beaches carefully, always watching the conditions as we are driving to the Maui beach wedding site to make certain that we won't run into problems. If we have a videographer or a minister at another beach, we often are in contact via cell phone to see what conditions are like down or up the coast if rain clouds are in the air.

We also have a back up plan if a large storm is due. We have back-up locations where we can stand up the eves of a restaurant, or in a covered gazebo just in case we need it. This is very important to use because we always want to be prepared. Sometimes the best solution to a little rain is just to wait until it stops. We have had very few weddings that could not be done because of weather, which is pretty amazing when you're talking about 1200 weddings over seven years.
Will a Maui beach site photograph well? This is something that many Maui wedding planners don't consider. There are a number of very popular beaches that my husband John really dislikes. He is very into things like the angle of the beach toward the setting sun, the presence of one or more palm trees to frame his pictures, a rocky outcropping to place the couple up against, etc. These are things that most wedding planners and certainly most couples don't think about or factor in to their choice of a beach because they are unable to compare the various beaches side-by-side. We definitely prefer some of our beaches because they are easier to photograph.

For all of these reasons, we recommend that couples consider coming to south Maui for their Maui beach wedding. You may have a great experience in another area of the island, but the odds favor south Maui. We always make recommendatioins to our couples based upon our experience, but then the final decision is up to them. (That's why we have experience of beaches that we don't enjoy!).

Whatever Maui beach you choose for your wedding, the odds are you'll have a great romantic experience because there is no place on earth quite like Maui!