Celebrant · Tweed Coast · NSW
Celebrant, Tweed Coast
Kingscliff, Cabarita, Casuarina, Pottsville and Fingal Head are twenty five minutes from Murwillumbah, where Felicity Best is based, and inside the included travel ring for most of their length. Ceremonies run $650 for legals only to $1,200 for a full Saturday wedding. Beach and reserve ceremonies need a Tweed Shire permit, booked well ahead for sunset slots in summer.
Venues
Places I've stood on the Tweed Coast.
- Kingscliff
- Cabarita Beach
- Casuarina
- Pottsville
- Fingal Head
- Osteria
- Fins Plantation House
- Salt Beach
Ceremonies on the Tweed Coast
The same prices as at home, plus the drive.
Tweed Coast is about 25 minutes from Murwillumbah. Travel within 80 km or an hour and a half of Murwillumbah is included, and $1 per kilometre round trip beyond that. Every price is published in full on the prices page.
The permit, and what it does not include
Tweed Shire books its beach, headland and reserve ceremony sites, and you book and pay for the permit directly with the shire. What that buys is a time and a place on the council's book, and the certainty that nobody else has been sold the same square of sand for the same hour. It does not close the beach. People will walk past, and at Kingscliff in January quite a few of them will.
Book the permit before the photographer and before anything is printed. The site and the hour decide the light, the wind and the parking, and every other supplier can work around a fixed point far more easily than they can move one. You book and pay for it directly with the council, and if you are not sure who to contact, I am happy to point you in the right direction.
Sand, tide and getting everyone down there
The access points along Salt, Casuarina and Cabarita are mostly stairs or soft sand, which decides more than people expect. Chairs have to be carried down and back up, a walking frame does not travel well, and a king tide can take out the strip of firm sand you planned the ceremony on. Checking the tide for the hour rather than the day is a two minute job that saves an afternoon.
Wind is the other one. Afternoon north easterlies are normal between October and March and they are worst on the headlands at Fingal and Cabarita, while mornings are calmer and better lit. A PA with a wireless microphone is in the full ceremony price for exactly this reason: it is the difference between a vow the back row hears and one they watch.
Which registry
A marriage on the Tweed Coast is registered in NSW by the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages: a standard certificate is $70 and its own registry ceremony $482 on a weekday. What differs across the border.
Questions
Questions people ask
- Do you need a permit for a beach wedding at Kingscliff or Cabarita?
- Yes. Tweed Shire Council books its beach and reserve sites, and you book and pay for the permit directly with the council. Sunset slots at Kingscliff, Salt Beach and Cabarita go months ahead over summer. You book and pay for the permit directly with the council.
- Which Tweed Coast venues do you work at?
- Osteria and Fins Plantation House at Kingscliff, the surf clubs and reserves along Salt Beach and Casuarina, Cabarita headland, Pottsville, and Fingal Head lighthouse reserve. Plenty of Tweed Coast ceremonies are also on private decks and lawns, which need no permit at all.
- What is the wind like for a beach ceremony?
- Enough to matter. A PA with a wireless microphone is in the full ceremony price for exactly this reason, and headland sites like Fingal and Cabarita are more exposed than the beaches below them. Afternoon north easterlies are the usual problem in summer, and mornings are calmer.
Get in touch
Check my date
Send the date, or the season, and where for a ceremony on the Tweed Coast. I will tell you whether it is free and exactly what it costs. No obligation.
Most days, 9am to 7pm.