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.