Hawaii is No. 1 in the nation for casual weddings, according to The Knot Inc., a wedding- and marriage-lifestyle-centric media company based in New York.

The statistic is not to say that brides in Hawaii don't do the froufrou dream-wedding-gown thing, or that grooms don't wear tuxes. Rather, it reflects that half of the wedding ceremonies in Hawaii take place on a beach, according to U.S. respondents in The Knot's 2009 Real Weddings Survey. On the mainland overall, about 7 percent of weddings are set on the beach.

In Hawaii, 38 percent of wedding receptions are also on the beach, versus 4 percent of U.S. weddings, The Knot reports.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, northern and central New Jersey and Long Island, N.Y., have the most black-tie, formal weddings.

Couples marrying in New York City and Long Island have the highest average wedding budgets, at $56,999 and $55,877, respectively, while the lowest is found in Arkansas at $15,073.

Even though some local wedding parties can be quite large, Hawaii and Las Vegas had the smallest guest lists, 96 and 68, given each market's number of destination weddings.

Not everybody marries a Rockefeller, Gates, Trump or sheik, after all.

Not known for destination weddings, couples who marry in Iowa and Nebraska have the largest weddings, with an average of more than 200 guests, according to the survey.

More than 21,000 U.S. couples responded to the survey and about 1 percent of them got married in Hawaii. Of those, 38 percent were local residents, meaning 62 percent came from the mainland to marry on our shores—many of them, quite literally speaking.

“;So destination weddings, as we would expect, are playing a very significant role in the numbers,”; said Carley Roney, executive editor, via e-mail.

Roney said about 0.4 percent of The Knot's respondents were Hawaii residents, which is on par with national population figures, “;so it isn't that the data is skewed per se, it is just that (destination weddings) are such a prominent element of the Hawaii wedding industry, their influence is going to be significant.”;

Hawaii Tourism Authority preliminary figures for 2009 show that 108,882 visitors came to the islands for weddings, about 1.7 percent of all visitors, according to Daniel Nahoopii, tourism research director.

“;It's the Japanese market that's the big side”; of the Hawaii wedding equation, he said.

The Knot's statistics are U.S.-only figures. Of Japanese visitors who travel to Hawaii, 4.8 percent came here specifically to get married in the islands.

Wedding travel to Hawaii is not as large as honeymoon travel, which drew 470,571 people from all over the world.

Asked about the odd number, Nahoopii explained that sometimes children are included in honeymoon travel, as are grandmothers or nannies.

Of mainland travelers, 10 percent chose Hawaii as their honeymoon destination while the percentage of Japanese visitors making the same choice, 18.5 percent, was significantly higher, HTA preliminary figures show.

Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin. Reach her by e-mail at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).