Multimedia Reporting (Adler-Utsler)

For many couples, the sound of ringing wedding bells invokes visions of flowing white dresses, smiling crowds and handfuls of rice tossed high into the air.

But that idyllic vision, just like the flying rice, at some point must fall back down to earth.

“Having that perfect wedding is just so expensive,”

Beverly Falley, owner of the Lawrence Travel Center, said. “The cost can be pretty intimidating.”

With the rising popularity of destination weddings, though, many couples are beginning to realize that it doesn’t have to be.

Deb Frederick, 46, got married in July in St. Thomas, one of the largest of the U.S. Virgin Islands. The price of her wedding ceremony? $1,200.

“We knew we wanted our wedding on the beach,” Frederick said. “The ceremony was small and beautiful and also happened to cost us a lot less than your big, traditional wedding,”

Frederick is one of the growing number of newlyweds to choose a destination wedding, which wraps the wedding ceremony and honeymoon together in one all-inclusive package.

Located in exotic settings such as Jamaica, Cancun, Mexico, or the Virgin Islands, destination weddings are becoming a more popular choice for couples who want to get the most wedding bang for their buck.

“We’ve had a 25 to 30 percent increase in destination weddings in the past couple of years,” Anne Walters, travel agent for Lawrence’s Carlson Wagonlit travel agency, said.

The growing popularity of destination weddings seen by Walters and other Lawrence travel agents is a trend exhibited by the country as a whole. Kim Guse of Weddings On the Move, a national company specializing in destination weddings, said that the past three years have seen a definite increase in the number of couples capitalizing on the affordability of getting married in vacation hotspots like those in the Caribbean.

“It’s hard to nail down an exact number,” Guse said, “but it would be impossible not to notice how many people are traveling for their wedding.”

For Kansans paying for their own wedding, a comparison of traditional weddings and destination weddings yields a compelling argument for the latter. Wedding industry statistics from Jaeger Interactive Communications estimate that of the 2.3 million wedding ceremonies that will take place this year, the average will cost $26,800. The most common age for a first marriage rests between 27 and 29 years, an age group in Kansas that averages an annual salary of about $57,000. At that level, the typical Lawrence couple can expect to spend almost half of their income this year on their wedding.

A destination wedding in Mexico, Puerto Rico or St. Lucia, however, could cost the same couple as little as $3,000.

“I’ve scheduled weddings for just a few thousand dollars for couples who don’t pay for their guests,” Falley said. “It’s more expensive for the guests, but it’s great for the couple.”

Ruth Dixon, the national affiliate program coordinator for Destination Wedding Travel, Inc., said that travel expenses for an engaged couple and their guests can range from between $750 and $1,100 per person, including the airfare and hotel stay. Travel costs associated with a destination wedding are comparable to the cost of the average five-day vacation, she said. For this reason, destination weddings tend to have much shorter guest lists than traditional weddings.

“Especially for couples on their second or third marriage, it’s just easier and sometimes more enjoyable to have fewer guests,” Falley said.

For both Deb Frederick and her husband, Mark, their St. Thomas wedding was their second marriage.

“One of the biggest draws for us was that we could have a smaller, more intimate ceremony” Frederick said. “It was just us and the six kids.”

The Association for Wedding Professionals estimates that the average wedding has a guest list of about 170 names. Most destination weddings will have less than a tenth of that.

“For the guests, it’s an excuse to go on a trip anyway,” Falley said. “And the intimate atmosphere of weddings with fewer guests can be just as much of a plus for people as price or location.”

The beauty of her wedding location was a top priority for Frederick, whose ceremony was decorated with tropical flowers and a tiered wedding cake. Wedding photos show the couple set against a clear blue sky with ocean waves lapping the island sand in the background.

“Who wouldn’t want to get married on a beach?” Frederick said. “Coming from the midwest, we’ll snap that chance right up.”

Couples expecting a quick, easy wedding in a foreign location, however, should think twice. The process of obtaining a marriage license in a foreign country can often get a bit complicated. Marriages in France, for example, require a 40-day stay in the country prior to the actual marriage ceremony. In Mexico, a marriage license costs $200 and comes attached to a three or four day waiting period. Prerequisites like these may drive many couples to have their wedding on a cruise ship or, like Frederick, in the Virgin Islands, where the wedding remains under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Government.

Still, as the price of traditional weddings continues to rise each year, travel agents like Anne Walters expect the popularity of destination weddings to rise right along with it. An array of different vacation destinations, too, have begun to cash in on the business of non-traditional destination weddings. Disney World, for example, recently made fairy tale weddings available at its resort outside of Orlando, Fla.

“A lot of companies are seeing that this is a market they want to get in on,” Walters said. “The wedding business is a $60 billion a year industry, so this is a trend that we probably won’t see the end of any time soon.”

Though it remains to be seen how many people will actually take Disney World up on its offer of a fairy tale wedding, Frederick doubts many people would be disappointed with a tropical destination wedding of their own.

“Everything was perfect,” she said. “The pictures and memories are fabulous. I wouldn’t do anything differently.”

For Mike Ivanuska, 20, and John O’Neal, 18, the most hazardous part of stealing the No Parking sign near the corner of Tenth and Maine streets was uprooting it from the ground.

“We had three people rocking back and forth on the sign for ten minutes just to get it out of the dirt,” O’Neal, said.

The stolen No Parking sign, now dislodged from its post and enshrined on Ivanuska’s otherwise bare bedroom wall, is an example of the mark college students can leave on a city like Lawrence. Stolen street signs, such as the one

snatched by Ivanuska and O’Neal, occupy much of the Department of Traffic Engineering’s resources, said Traffic Engineer David Woosley. In a city with more than 30,000 college students, the signs are stolen for a number of different reasons. But Lawrence’s status as one of Kansas’ most likely sites for street sign theft remains the same.

“Special road signs with a special meaning for people are the first to go,” said Lee Holmes, the Kansas state traffic signing engineer. “People like to take signs with unique wording.”

By Holmes definition, Lawrence’s most uniquely worded signs would be the ones located on High Drive. Street name signs including High Drive and Tennessee and Louisiana streets are the most popular choices for sign thieves, Woosley said, followed by No Parking and speed bump signs. All together, in the past two years an average of 426 signs were stolen from Lawrence streets annually.

The tendency to steal street name signs means very few Kansas highway signs are

taken, Holmes said. “Most are stolen from cities and especially around college campuses where there are a lot of students.”

In Kansas, college towns have a much higher rate of sign theft than cities without large universities. Of the 10 most populous Kansas cities, Lawrence and Manhattan, home to the University of Kansas and Kansas State, report the highest number of sign thefts per capita. Lawrence has one sign stolen for every 192 people and Manhattan has one for every 122 people. The city closest to those numbers is Kansas City, Kan., which has one sign stolen for every 252 people. In contrast, cities lacking large universities have a much lower rate of sign theft. Shawnee has one sign stolen for every 720 people, Salina has one for every 836 people and Overland Park loses one sign for every 4,709 people.

Debbie Rollins, Lawrence’s traffic control technician, said she has observed patterns in the thefts that point to college students as the primary culprits.

“We lose the most signs in September because all the students are back at school,” Rollins said. “And every May we get a bunch of signs returned from the dorms after kids move out of their rooms and the University finds what they stole.”

The Department of Traffic Engineering, which is in charge of street signal and sign maintenance, has a yearly budget of $55,000. When street signs go missing in Lawrence, the cost to replace them can consume over half of the budget, leaving less money to maintain of stop lights and pavement markings. But despite the relatively high number of sign thefts, it is rare for the thieves to get caught.

“It’s hard for the police department to keep an eye on every sign in town. They have bigger responsibilities than watching for kids who steal signs,” Rollins said.

Those caught tampering with any traffic signal can be charged under Kansas law with a misdemeanor that carries a fine of up to $500 and the possibility of one month in jail.

“A traffic control sign such as a yield or stop sign that is stolen can present a danger to pedestrians and the motoring public for obvious reasons,” said Sgt. Paul Fellers of the Lawrence Police Department. This kind of theft, called aggravated tampering, constitutes signal tampering that could result in injury or death and is a felony offense that carries a fine of up to $100,000 and the possibility of 13 months in jail.

But rather than trying to catch sign thieves, Rollins said, Lawrence has focused on becoming more efficient at replacing signs after they go missing. The Department of Traffic Engineering recently incorporated a series of aerial maps and GPS information for Lawrence to help traffic officials locate and fix or replace damaged or missing signs.

Despite improved oversight, the number of signs the traffic engineering field staff will need to replace is nearly impossible to predict.

“It’s different every year,” Rollins said. “It all depends on what the students feel like doing from year to year.”

“We stole our sign on impulse,” O’Neal said. “We just wanted a novelty thing to hang on the wall.”

And for now, Lawrence appears to be safe from another sign theft masterminded by O’Neal and Ivanuska.

“I’ll keep this sign in my room,” Ivanuska said. “But there’s no way I’ll steal another one. It takes way too much work.”