The word on Anna Maria Island Weddings just keeps getting better as more and more people are flocking to the Island for destination weddings. The Anna Maria wedding industry has grown tremendously in the last few years, with our Island becoming a premier low-key destination for weddings on the Gulf Coast of Florida. And this weekend, the third annual Anna Maria Island Wedding Festival is certain to continue spreading that good word. Festival attendance more than doubled in only two years and we expect to see that same trend at this weekend’s Festival. We at the Chiles Group Restaurants have been organizing and hosting destination weddings for a long time. Between the Sandbar and BeachHouse Restaurants, we host about 500 weddings every year, so it is certainly no surprise to us why Anna Maria Island is being hailed as the Wedding Capital of Florida.
“At first, everybody laughed at that a little,” said Ed Chiles, owner of the Sandbar, BeachHouse, and Mar Vista Restaurants, in an interview with brandenton.com. “But we have kind of grown into that. About 60-70 percent of the weddings here are destination-point weddings.”
These numbers are no laughing matter - except maybe in celebration of our island having found its way through some really tough economic times. The success of the Anna Maria Island Weddings has meant good news for many Island businesses. The thriving Wedding Industry has helped many stay buoyant during a stormy economy. And what is even better news for Anna Maria is that all these weddings boost tourism - after having fallen in love with Anna Maria Island, many of those wedding visitors also return as vacationers.
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