Our ceremony is going to be on a small private beach at the Lodge of the Four Seasons at the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. The above picture is a picture from their website of how the area looks when used for weddings. We've always wanted to have a beach wedding but never thought it was possible with our budget and our family's budgets. This is a great compromise. This is in the same town where my grandparents live and is about an hour from where I live. We plan on having the ceremony near sunset at 7:00 or 7:30 pm. Right now we expect about 80 guests.

We love the idea of having a sand ceremony. We plan on buying some containers to achieve a look like this set from moonglowcandles.com. Justin used to go to Daytona Beach, FL with his family every summer and has a jar of white sand that he's had since first grade. We plan to blend that sand and the darker sand at our ceremony site. I have considered blending in some blue sand to incorporate our color scheme. We'll have to think about that. I also really like the idea of having our mothers have some part in this by carrying our separate vases of sand and placing them on the sand ceremony table or by having them each pour some of our sand into the big vase before we do.