"beach Cleaning Fee" ?

[Abbykong333]

I'm two months away from our big day and working out a few add on's with our planner (adding guests, changing some minor details) when she hits me with a $350 "beach cleaning fee". Our ceremony is on the beach that is in front of the restaurant that is our venue... I'm already paying a good deal of restaurant fees and also fees to set up chairs on the beach ($5/head) and now this?

 

Moreover, we signed our contract nearly a year ago and it did not include this.

She makes a flat fee, but has not exactly been easy to negotiate with- i.e. I tried to ask her to negotiate with the officiant, and she reduced $25, but said she didn't want to negotiate with him.

I feel that all her prices are probably well padded but it's a destination wedding and hard to micro-manage.

 

I'm pretty annoyed about this fee though, because it's a significant amount of money. Has anyone heard of a beach cleaning fee before? It doesn't seem like something typical when I googled it.

[MarieSamSanchezPhoto]

Not sure where you are getting married, but I got married in a little town called Akumal about 90 minutes from Cancun. The little stretch of beach where we got married is typically used by the vacationers who stayed at the condos in front of that beach. We did have a beach cleaning fee as well, but that was so our coordinator could pay a crew to essentially clean the beach area (pick up the seaweed, rake the sand, etc.) where our ceremony decor, aisle and arch would be placed at. It also included the take down of the items after our ceremony as well. We could actually watch the crew do the cleanup from our balcony on our Wedding Day and the fee was totally legit.

 

Because the beaches are open to the public (and there can be TONS of people in that area at any given time), the fee allows them to clean/prep the site and manage the clean up process after. Also, allows you to close off that area for your wedding day. So you are not alone!!!