"A lot of people are actually making it into a vacation," said McGovern, a 31-year-old biochemist from Florida. "When you say it's in Hawai'i you get a lot of people all of a sudden wanting to go. It'll be fun to just hang out with family in Hawai'i for a week."

McGovern and Colling are joining the growing numbers of couples who have "destination weddings" in Hawai'i. They are particularly valuable to the tourism industry because they bring dozens of guests who also pump money into the economy.

Several family members flying here to attend the McGovern-Colling wedding, which includes a lu'au, are also taking a weeklong cruise around the Islands. Guests, excited about their first trip to Hawai'i, have been calling with questions about local activities and attractions.

The destination wedding is a "new and growing phenomenon" for Mainland couples, said Frank Haas, marketing director for the Hawai'i Tourism Authority. "That's been a trend in Japan for some time, and it's a growing trend for the U.S.

"It really reflects some changes in the whole concept of getting married," he said. "It used to be getting married was very conventional — you get married in your hometown and your home church and you invite family and friends from around there. I think society's changed to the point where it's more accepting of different ways of getting married and one of them is the destination wedding, where you bring the bridal party and friends to the destination for the ceremony. And we're seeing that increase."

So far this year the number of visitors who come here to marry has grown by 8.5 percent over the same time last year, with Mainland couples having the largest increase at 16.5 percent. Japanese visitors coming here to get married make up the largest wedding segment, and are up 6.4 percent so far compared to 2003, when the war in Iraq and SARS kept many international tourists away.

The number of Mainland couples getting married here has more than doubled in the past 10 years, according to marriage license data from the state Department of Health. The state issued 7,200 marriage licenses to Mainland couples in 1994. That grew to 16,168 last year, nearly twice as many issued to Hawai'i residents.

Many Japanese couples get their marriage licenses in Japan before flying here for the ceremony.

Destination weddings overall have increased by more than 200 percent in the past 10 years, according to The Knot Inc. TheKnot.com launched a destination wedding section in March, and since then there has been a "dramatic increase in both resort participation and audience response," said Rob Fassino, vice president at The Knot.

Web traffic on the Hawai'i destination wedding section alone has increased 170 percent since the launch, he said.

While still a fraction of the more than 6 million visitors to the state each year, the wedding market is highly valued.

"It's hugely important," said Gov. Linda Lingle's tourism liaison, Marsha Wienert. "Number one, they tend to stay longer and spend more."

The wedding market also brings money to small businesses that do not traditionally benefit from the visitor industry, such as photographers and florists, she said.

"As you look at niche markets, that's one of the things that you want to look at — how can you expand the economic impact into other business sectors so that everybody reaps the rewards from that," she said.

Hawai'i's visitor wedding market — which the state began tracking separately from honeymooners for the first time last year — generated about $605 million in 2003, according to state Department of Economic Development and Tourism officials.

An increase in business prompted Aloha Bridal Gallery to open a new bridal salon this month in Waikiki. The company handled about 250 weddings last year, and is expected to handle up to 350 this year with weddings booked through 2006, said Kathy Porter, who runs the business with her husband, Mike. About 80 percent of the business is for out-of-state couples.

"We've been in business since 1995 and each year it increases more and more," she said, adding that military couples have also recently contributed to the increase. Porter said she has also noticed a rise in larger wedding parties that accompany the bride and groom here, noting destination weddings are receiving more exposure in bridal magazines and on television. Most destination weddings Porter plans for Mainland couples average about 40 to 50 guests.

"I would say in the last three years it's becoming more and more popular," she said.

But Hawai'i has competition from other places. Maui came in fifth for actual destination wedding locations, behind Las Vegas, Florida, Mexico and Jamaica. O'ahu came in seventh on the list for actual destination wedding locations, according to data from The Knot CEO David Liu, who spoke at the Hawai'i tourism conference in September.

Hawai'i was the most popular fall destination for Japanese weddings and honeymoons, according to recent bookings data by JTB Corp., Japan's largest travel agency.

Watabe Wedding Corp., the largest organizer of overseas weddings for Japanese, said it has been booking about 10,000 Hawai'i weddings a year lately, short of the 15,000 it had in 2000.

But the overall Japanese wedding market is expected to grow about 14 percent to about 24,000 weddings this year, said Donald Amemiya, manager of Watabe's control department. That's partly because other wedding companies are putting more emphasis into building ocean-view wedding venues, he said.

Best Bridal Hawai'i, which does nearly all of its weddings for Japanese customers, has grown steadily busier since 9/11, said vice president Karen Mukai.

"We feel that the customers are coming back to Hawai'i," Mukai said. But the company recently started to expand its business to Mainland and local couples, partly because it has been receiving more requests from Mainland couples seeking to get married at its Paradise Cove chapel.

The company also realized the risk in relying on just Japanese customers.

"I think the 9/11 crisis taught us a good lesson — that if we're going to be a company that's going to basically only service one type of clientele, the longevity of the business is too dependent on that one clientele, meaning from Japan," Mukai said. "If something were to happen, like 9/11 where Japanese people were hesitant and afraid to travel, that affects the welfare of our company. And we did see that Hawai'i got a lot of support from North American tourism."