Coming up with a wedding budget — and managing to stick with it — can be a stress-fraught exercise in the best of times. So it’s hardly an enviable task in a year when society’s mantra has switched from spend to save.

But that doesn’t mean couples need to shelve their dreams of getting married at sunrise on a perfect beach in the tropics. In fact, one of the most common arguments in favour of choosing a destination wedding — which is that going away to get married can actually cost far less than a celebration on your home turf — still seems to hold true.

A recent survey released by Bridal Guide magazine found that “almost 30 per cent of readers are planning or considering a destination wedding ... and the median number of invited guests per wedding is 43, with 25 per cent of respondents saying they estimate 75 or more guests will attend their destination wedding. “While the bleak economy continues to take a bite out of the travel industry, the forecast for destination wedding travel is looking up,” said the magazine.

Destination wedding spending grew more than 300 per cent from 2001 to 2006, according to the publication, and is projected to grow at an annual average rate of 14 per cent.

And one Caribbean hotel executive went so far as to tell USA Today that the destination wedding trade is “recession-proof.”

“This is a recession-proof market,” the newspaper quoted Donald Foste, group sales director for Occidental — a hotel chain with properties in Aruba and the Dominican Republic — as saying. “Brides are going to get married regardless of what’s happening in the economy.”

Certainly, destinations who want to attract wedding business are still pulling out the stops when it comes to marketing.

As one example, on March 29, a single destination, Jamaica, will hold its very own destination wedding show in New York City to attract couples and their guests — a bold step regardless of the economic climate.

These days, you can find plenty of wedding planners in almost any location you can think of, and major resorts are increasingly likely to have a wedding co-ordinator on staff as well as a variety of wedding packages.

But just as a frugal bride would try to look beyond a supplied vendor list were she to hold her big day closer to home, don’t assume that the services a resort suggests are necessarily your only option.

With a bit of online digging — as well as looking into what suggestions
the destination’s tourist board can offer — you may well find you can cobble together services from an officiant to a florist for less than a resort would charge.