How much does it cost to get married in Hawaii?

How much does it cost to get married in Hawaii? $65 for the marriage license, about $565 for the license and an officiant with nothing else, $2,095 to $3,155 for an Oahu elopement package with photos, video and hair and makeup, and $17,000 and up for a wedding with guests at a venue. Ours is $3,500 plus tax, all-inclusive.

The team behind this guide has photographed more than 200 elopements on Oahu since 2019. Every price below was read from the State of Hawaii's own pages or from Oahu vendors' and companies' own price pages in September 2026, and the few that come from couples say so.

What each piece costs on Oahu, bought on its own

Prices as published on Monday 21 September 2026; the license fee from the state's page, re-read Sunday 27 September 2026.

Four ways to get married in Hawaii, and what each costs

Ours sits in the third card: $3,500 plus tax, with the album, the full ceremony recording and the Super 8 style film that no other Oahu package includes.

How much does it cost to elope in Hawaii?

An elopement on Oahu with photos, video and hair and makeup costs $2,095 to $3,155 in the packages companies publish, before the 4.712% tax. Add a limousine, a musician and a hula dancer and the top of the market runs $3,895 to $8,995. Ours is $3,500 plus tax: two hours on the beach or in a park, 150 edited photos, the full ceremony recording, a Super 8 style film, a printed album, two fresh leis, a bridal bouquet, a licensed officiant, hair and makeup where you're staying, and the permit and insurance.

At that price the photos usually mean about 90 minutes and around 100 images, and the cheapest packages hand you 20 to 40 images, or 10 downloads and a price list for the rest. Ours is two hours, 150 edited images, the full ceremony recording, a Super 8 style film and the album.

Read the tiers before you read the totals. The cheapest packages don't include a photographer at all, and in some of the ones that do, the good photographer sits behind an extra fee. The number that matters is what's inside it.

What's the Hawaii marriage license cost?

$65: a $60 application fee plus a $5 portal fee, paid online when you apply. Then the two of you meet a license agent in person, no sooner than 30 days before the ceremony. There's no waiting period, and the license is good for 30 days inside Hawaii. That's the whole cost of the paperwork, and it's the same whether you live in Honolulu, Houston or Hamburg.

The order to do it in, and the appointment that saves you a morning, are part of what you get with us once you book.

How to get married in Hawaii for cheap

Get the $65 license, book an officiant for about $500 with the fees, and that's it. You're married, on a beach, for under $600, and nobody needs to hire anyone else.

The question that decides it isn't the price. It's how much the photos and the film matter to you. If the answer is not much, you don't need us or anyone like us: get married, sign the paper, go to dinner. If the answer is a lot, then the real question is the one we ask every couple. Ten or twenty years from now, do you want this day documented, or not? Everything else on this page is priced off that answer.

And if "cheap" means booking the photographer, the makeup artist and the officiant yourself instead of a package, count the cost that isn't on any invoice: your time. It means finding four people from wherever you live, matching four calendars to one sunrise, and doing it from a time zone where Hawaii is two to six hours behind the mainland and doesn't change its clocks, so your question lands before anyone here is awake and the answer lands during your dinner. Then a forecast turns, or a permit stalls, or a flight moves, and the four calendars have to be matched again, one message at a time, from your phone. If guests are coming, add them to the thread: every change goes out to everyone, and nothing is settled until everyone has said yes. That's the stress couples don't count until they're living it, and by then it's the week of the wedding.

What are the best places to get married in Hawaii on a budget?

A public beach or a park, with a permit. On Oahu a two-hour state beach permit is listed at about $20 plus liability insurance, and the view is the one the estates charge thousands for. The places that cost real money are the private ones: couples on Reddit reported $7,000 to rent a Maui estate for the day, about $20,000 once the tent and the bathrooms it required were added, and $17,000 for a 13-guest wedding at a garden venue on Oahu.

Which beach is the wrong first question, and it's the one everyone asks. Start with what matters to the two of you: the ocean behind you, a sunset, green mountains. Then who's coming, because two friends and a family of ten need different amounts of sand. Then who can walk where, because if grandpa's there, the spot at the end of the trail is out.

Let Hawaii be your chapel. You don't need a building, or a place with a rulebook, to make it real. The land has its own rules, and we follow those. The rest is yours.

What are the hidden costs of getting married in Hawaii?

Tax, travel fees, early-morning and holiday fees, per-guest fees, and a fee just to talk. Every company adds Hawaii's 4.712% general excise tax on top of the quoted price. Beyond that, these are the fees couples on Reddit and in reviews didn't see coming.

• Travel fees, per vendor. Officiants and makeup artists on Oahu add $50 to $125 each outside Waikiki and Honolulu, and musicians quote by the time and the place, so a sunrise ceremony on the far side of the island can carry three travel fees.
• Sunrise, early-morning, weekend and holiday fees. One Oahu officiant adds $75 for a sunrise ceremony and up to $300 on the biggest holidays. Makeup artists add $75 to $275 for an early start.
• Per-guest fees. Many packages cap the group and charge for more people, so your parents and two friends become a line item. Ours includes up to eight guests, and nine to 25 is one flat $500.
• A fee just to talk. One couple gathering quotes found a company that charged a non-refundable fee, from $100, before it would discuss a date.
• The better photographer costs extra. In one package a couple described, the included photographer was the basic one, and the ones "with much better quality" were an extra fee.
• A payment kept after an illness or an emergency. Five of the 28 written low-star reviews we read of the two biggest Oahu companies were about exactly that.

What we do about each one. The price is the same at sunrise, on a Saturday and on Christmas Day. There's no travel fee anywhere on Oahu. Up to eight guests are included, and nine to 25 is one flat $500. Tax is added, and it says so beside the price. You'll have the total in writing before you book, and the terms are on the packages page before you pay anything: plans change, so you can move your date once, free, if you tell us 60 or more days out and our vendors are free. The $1,000 retainer is non-refundable, since it holds a date we would otherwise give to another couple. The $2,500 balance is due 60 days before your day, and if you have to cancel after that, it becomes a credit toward a new date within 12 months.

The biggest hidden cost isn't on any invoice. It's the stress of doing all of it yourself, which you only feel once you're living it, and by then it's your wedding day and you didn't really enjoy it. That's the cost the package exists to remove.

Is a package worth it, or should we book everything ourselves?

Add up the bills in the first table and booking it yourself lands at about $2,500 to $3,900 before tax. The Oahu packages with the same things inside are $2,095 to $3,155. So at the vendors' own published prices and fees, doing it yourself costs more on Oahu, not less. It also moves the planning onto you.

One more thing about doing it yourself, and it's the one most couples never hear. The moment a paid person is part of your ceremony, an officiant, a photographer, anyone, it becomes commercial activity on a state beach or in a park. The state asks two things of whoever is paid to be there: a permit, and liability insurance to hold it. That's true whether you booked a package or booked them one by one. Not every vendor carries the insurance, and a vendor without it can't be issued the permit at all. From what we see on the sand, most of the weddings happening around us on any given day don't have one. Book a vendor who can't get one, and they aren't legally allowed to be working there with you and your guests, and if someone from the state or the county walks up and asks, your ceremony stops, right there. The risk lands on you, on the most important day of your life.

Getting a permit is also a matter of respect toward the land. Your ceremony is one afternoon on this beach. Hawaii has to look after it for every afternoon that follows, and the fee is what the state asks of everyone who works on its land. We pay it every time, and any vendor you hire should be able to say the same. When you book a package, the company gets the permit and has the insurance, and both are included in the price. When you book each vendor yourself, ask who is getting the permit before you pay anyone, because if nobody is, there's no fixing it on the beach.

Plenty of couples book everything themselves, and some have a wonderful day. A package isn't four vendors on one invoice. It's a team that has done this on Oahu more than 200 times and already knows plan B, C, D and E before you need one. When a permit stalls or a forecast turns, you get the options, you pick one, and you carry on with your plans.

You don't know what you don't know. A couple once wanted a botanical garden, and only found out later that its photography permit takes far longer than a beach permit does. Put that on top of the marriage license, on top of the flights, on top of the hotel, on top of everyone asking you questions, and you've given yourself a second job. The full version of that story, and what the couples who did it themselves wish they had known, is in our guide to eloping in Hawaii: How to elope in Hawaii.

What 200 elopements on Oahu taught us about the money

1. The same price at sunrise, on a weekend and on a holiday. $3,500 plus tax, any day, any hour. The sunrise fee is the first thing couples ask about once they've read other price lists.
2. The permit is inside the price, and it's the vendor's job. The state asks the paid vendor to hold the permit and the insurance. Ask any company you talk to whether both are inside their price. Ours are.
3. The total is in writing before you book. In more than 200 elopements, no couple has been surprised by the total, because it was in writing before anything was paid.
4. The ride is yours to book, and it should be. A car that waits puts a meter on your morning. Call one when you're ready instead, and if the ceremony runs a little long, or you want ten more minutes in the water, nobody is checking a watch.
5. Cheap and beautiful aren't opposites here. The ocean and the mountains cost the same for every couple. The expensive part is the private venue, and you don't need one.
6. A second location is $500, not a second day. It adds an hour and the drive, 75 more edited images in your gallery, and a minute more of the Super 8 style film. Couples who want the beach and the mountains take it.

Daniella

Photographing weddings since 2018 and Oahu elopements since 2019, more than 200 of them.