Expert: Ernest Tufft - 6/29/2009

Question
Hi!
My fiance and i are looking at getting married in may of 2010. and we orginally planned on having the wedding in hawaii. but personal reasons came up. we still want to get married on a beach. and my fiance brought up cali. but my reasons why not to get married there are because of the over crowded and trashed beaches! Are there any beaches in Cali that arent over crowded and trashed?! i would really love to make my fiance happy because its not just my day its his too!

sincerely,
megan

Answer
Hi Megan,

There are of course many great beaches in California that are isolated and not trashed, even in Southern California.  But, what you decided is also based upon the needs not only of you and your fiance, but also those who may attend the wedding.  I have a nephew who had a wedding in Hawaii at great expense, and so family members flew themselves there, while some friends stayed home due to the expense.  Everyone had a great time, but the marriage didn't last, and so the disappointment lingers even more bitterly now.

Back to beach recommendations:  There are beautiful and desolate beaches in Northern California, where a B&B can be a great place to spend the honeymoon.  Mendocino comes immediately to mind, but Marin and Sonoma County coastlines also have plenty of small towns with great little restaurants, hiking trails to vista points, and secluded cove beaches.  These beaches are not the hot bikini lover's sort of beach though.  For that you will want to visit a beach from Santa Cruz south to San Diego.  Santa Cruz, Monterey Bay area also has a number of small towns with pleasant beaches.  A favorite romantic spot for young couples short on cash would be Santa Cruz, Capitola, or Aptos.  Deep pocketed couple might prefer Pacific Grove, Pebble Beach, or Carmel.  The 17th mile Drive in Pebble Beach is a classic honeymoon scenic drive where horse drawn carriages once took newlyweds along what I consider one of the most beautiful and unique coastlines in the entire world.  Today, sports cars and bicycles tour along the coast, and the eco-system has been carefully restored to include native coastal flowers, bunch grasses, and aquatic tide pools.

South Central Coast a Morro Bay and Pismo Beach area are favorite get-away beaches for those from Southern California, as LA urban beaches can be too many people and not enough nature.  However, Laguna Beach at the southern end of the LA beach cities is a great affluent style beach community for art lovers to browse galleries and the like.

Naturally, the most famous of San Diego's beach communities require deep pockets to appreciate, but La Jolla and Coronado are both wonderful places to have a beach wedding.

You can visit virtuatourist.com of images and descriptions of all these places under my membername of atufft.  The rest of the research is up to you...:-0 Have fun...