Elopements · Gold Coast · QLD
Elopement celebrant, Gold Coast
A Gold Coast elopement with Felicity Best is $750 midweek and $875 Friday to Sunday, whatever the guest list, with the drive from Murwillumbah included. A beach or park needs a City of Gold Coast permit, booked and paid for directly with the council. Most packaged Gold Coast elopements bundle a photographer and a stylist and cost considerably more. This price is the ceremony on its own.
What it costs on the Gold Coast
| What you get | Mon–Thu | Fri–Sun |
|---|---|---|
| Elopement A ceremony written to tell your love story, a planning meeting, help with your vows, the legal paperwork, PA and wireless microphone, your commemorative certificate. | $750 | $875 |
Australian dollars, no GST. Travel within 80 km or an hour and a half of Murwillumbah is included, whichever gets you there; beyond both it is $1 per kilometre, round trip. Booking fee $250, which comes off the total. Witnesses supplied at $60 each. Council permits for beach and park ceremonies are booked and paid for directly with the council, and are not included.
The Gold Coast is about 40 minutes from Murwillumbah. Travel within 80 km or an hour and a half of Murwillumbah is included; beyond that it is $1 per kilometre round trip. Allow about two months for a weekend date in season.
Venues
Where on the Gold Coast
- Currumbin
- Currumbin Rock Pools
- Burleigh Heads
- Palm Beach
- Tallebudgera Creek
Ceremonies on public beaches, reserves and parks usually need a permit, which you book and pay for directly with the council or land manager. The requirements and fees vary between councils and sites, and they are not included in the ceremony fee.
Currumbin, in detail
Currumbin is the most useful elopement location on the southern Gold Coast because it is three sites in one. The rock pools up the valley give you shade, still water and no wind. The creek mouth at the Alley is flat, sheltered and walkable from the car. The beach is the wide open version, and the headland behind it holds the light after the sand has lost it.
All three are City of Gold Coast ceremony sites and all three need a permit. Parking at the Alley fills early on weekends and at any hour in January. A weekday morning solves that entirely, and the water is calmer then too.
Doing it at short notice
The binding constraint is not me and not the venue. It is the calendar month between lodging your Notice of Intended Marriage and the ceremony, and no agreement can waive it. A shortening of time goes to a prescribed authority, needs documented grounds and is refused often. Work to the month. The NOIM, explained.
Inside that, a Gold Coast elopement can come together in a fortnight. Council permits at short notice are usually available midweek and almost never at a summer sunset, the photographer is the next bottleneck, and if you are travelling on your own then two witnesses aged eighteen or over have to come from somewhere. I can supply them at $60 each.
The paperwork, in QLD
A ceremony on the Gold Coast is recorded by the Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, because a marriage is registered in the state it took place in. A standard certificate there is $58.10, and its own registry ceremony is $410.60 on a weekday. What changes across the border, and the NOIM in full.
Questions
Questions people ask
- Where can you elope on the Gold Coast?
- Currumbin beach and the rock pools up the valley, Tallebudgera Creek, Burleigh headland at first light, and Palm Beach parklands. All are council sites needing a permit. The hinterland at Springbrook, and Tamborine Mountain over the council line, is quieter, cooler and usually easier to book at short notice.
- Do Gold Coast elopement packages include a celebrant?
- Most do, and several of the packagers here are worth using, because they handle the permit, the photographer and the styling in one booking. If you already have a packager, book me into their run sheet. If you do not, $875 covers the ceremony itself on a weekend.
Get in touch
Check my date
Send the date, or the season, and where for elopements on the Gold Coast. I will tell you whether it is free and exactly what it costs. No obligation.
Most days, 9am to 7pm.