What a beach ceremony permit actually costs

We read every authority that can permit a ceremony on Long Island sand or parkland. That means the state parks region, both counties, fourteen towns and two cities, the Town Trustees on the East End, five gardens and the National Park Service. Of the 28 public authorities, 4 publish both a fee and an attendance cap. Jones Beach and Robert Moses publish neither, and neither does Montauk Point, Hither Hills, Camp Hero, Shadmoor, Connetquot River, Nissequogue River, Wildwood or Caumsett.

That is not an oversight at the state level. The 2026 Park Use Permit application says fees are set after the application is approved, and the only cap is relational.

“UPON APPROVAL, FEES WILL BE DETERMINED AND APPLICANT WILL BE INVOICED.” NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Long Island Region

The same permit guide prints exact figures for other things, which is how we know the silence is a choice rather than a gap in the paperwork. So if you are planning a ceremony on state parkland, the honest answer is that you cannot budget it from published figures, and you have to apply and wait for an invoice.

This is the detail that changes a guest list. All three of the public caps sound similar and none of them means the same thing.

Nassau County counts your vendors inside the cap: “No more than 50 attendees total permitted, and subject to current New York State guidelines. (This includes bridal party, photographer/videographer, drivers, guests of all ages)” Nassau County Parks wedding ceremony permit

East Hampton excludes them: “Catered events on Town beaches with more than 50 guests, unless the event is sponsored by a local charitable organization as defined herein. [Added 3-2-2023 by L.L. No. 3-2023] Wedding ceremonies on...” East Hampton Town Code Ch. 151

Southampton's form runs to a larger number again, at 75, on form CP-649 revised January 2026. So the same photographer, videographer and driver that fill three of Nassau's fifty seats cost you nothing against East Hampton's fifty. A couple comparing the two on the number alone would get the Nassau plan wrong by the size of their vendor team.

Two more numbers get mistaken for caps and are not. Islip's 200 is a threshold: above it you file a different application with the Town Clerk. Suffolk County's headcount bands are a price ladder with no ceiling at the top. East Hampton's 20 is a third kind again: the point at which a permit becomes necessary, not a maximum.

Both counties are worth reading in their own words, because each one carries a condition that is easy to miss and expensive to discover late.

Nassau's resident rate is not about where you live, quite. It is about holding a Leisure Pass, and the form has a field for the number.

“Either the bride or the groom must be a Nassau County resident with a valid Leisure Pass to qualify for the $50 resident permit fee. The non-resident permit fee is $100.” Nassau County Parks wedding ceremony permit

The same page prints four more terms that shape the day rather than the budget. A maximum of 20 chairs, allowed to aid elderly and disabled guests. No tents or canopies. No amplification of sound in any form. And the ceremony cannot take place before 10 a.m. or after dusk. It also says the permit is rain or shine, and that it covers the ceremony only, with any reception off site or in a picnic area reserved separately. Photography is a separate permit again.

One documentation note. The form carries no printed revision date. The only date signal is in its filename, which implies November 2020, so we are not presenting that as the document's date.

Suffolk has no wedding permit at all, and its Group Event Permit application does not mention weddings: its own examples are group or scout camping, a picnic, a walk or a hike. The money comes from the general parks fee schedule, tiered by headcount, and the schedule charges more if you pay by card.

Two things about that schedule we will not tidy up. It carries no printed effective date anywhere across its pages, so we cannot tell you how current it is. And it prints the same line, a commercial photography use permit per day, twice with different amounts: $1,000.00 cash and $1,027.00 by card on one line, then $500.00 cash and $513.50 by card on the next, with nothing distinguishing them. Both are quoted here and neither is chosen. Ask the West Sayville office which applies before you budget it.

Tents at a Suffolk park are a third authority again. The application asks how many tents and what size, and notes that a Fire Marshal inspection may be required; above 200 square feet for a tent, or 400 for a canopy, the county Fire Marshal's own permit applies. That is the same threshold we cover in tent permits town by town, and you can check the whole stack for your own plan in the permit finder.

One row deserves comment. The Town of Hempstead is the largest town in the country by population and publishes nothing about a beach ceremony at Lido Beach or Point Lookout. Its only published ceremony fee is $65 for the Town Clerk's chapel at Town Hall. Suffolk County's fee schedule carries no effective date anywhere, and prints the same commercial photography permit line twice at two different amounts. We have printed both and chosen neither.

Two warnings that apply on the East End regardless of which row you are reading. The Town Trustees in East Hampton and Southampton are separately elected bodies with their own permits and their own fees, so a beach can need two approvals. And Southampton will not issue its facility use permit to a non resident at all, while East Hampton publishes a full non resident price list.

If you want a published number you can plan against, the private gardens are where to look, and three of the five have one.

Bayard Cutting Arboretum publishes the cleanest pair on the Island, a $450 ceremony permit for 20 people. Planting Fields publishes ceremony rental from $2,500 for up to 120 guests. Bailey Arboretum contradicts itself across two live pages on both the fee and the cap, so both readings are in our source file and we have not picked one. Old Westbury Gardens publishes no ceremony fee and no cap on its current site: the figures that circulate online trace to PDFs on a domain that no longer resolves, which is exactly the sort of number we will not reprint. Sands Point Preserve publishes photography permits but its only guest figure is a minimum, not a cap.

1. Establish who owns the sand. A state park, a county park, a town beach and a Trustees beach are four different authorities with four different forms.
2. Ask whether the cap counts your vendors. It is the question that decides your guest list, and only two authorities answer it in writing.
3. Ask about amplified sound separately. Nassau County's permit bars it outright, and even where a park is silent the town noise code still applies: when outdoor music has to stop, town by town.
4. Ask about chairs and tents as their own question. Nassau publishes a 20 chair limit and no tents, and East Hampton bars beach tents other than for food service.
5. If it is a state park, apply early and expect the fee to arrive as an invoice rather than a price.

The federal case is its own animal: Fire Island National Seashore names weddings as a permit category and then publishes neither a fee nor a cap, only cost recovery language. We wrote that up separately in the Fire Island wedding permit. Also worth reading beside this: the East Hampton beach wedding permit, tent permits town by town, and the permit finder.

11 authorities could not be read cleanly, and we have listed each in our notes rather than writing them up as publishing nothing. One correction worth stating because it circulates: the Town of Islip does publish a full resident and non resident fee table. Its site refuses some automated requests, which is how it acquires a reputation for publishing nothing.

Sources: each authority's own page or form, linked in the tables above, read on 28 September 2026 · NYS Parks Long Island Region park use permit · Nassau County Parks wedding ceremony permit · East Hampton Town Code Ch. 151 and Resolution 2026-140 · Town of Southampton form CP-649
Nothing here is legal advice. Fees and caps change, and the office that issues the permit outranks this page.