Lake Tahoe is one of Northern California's most photogenic wedding spots, with picture-postcard views from every conceivable angle and at almost every time of year. What many adventure-loving Sacramento brides and grooms have also learned is that Tahoe boasts another bridal attribute: versatility.

Two hours from downtown&emdash;and even closer from Granite Bay, Folsom, and El Dorado Hills&emdash;Lake Tahoe is an ideal wedding destination, close enough for a one-day sprint and well-suited to a weekend-long affair.

Come One, Come All to Tahoe

Although modestly populated, both North and South shores offer a surprisingly robust array of bridal services, from spa dates to sleighs for hire, and ceremony venues ranging from sheltered coves to the top of Harrah's casino.

It's pretty much whatever the couple's imagination can create. Everybody's wedding up here is so different, says My Wedding Planner's Lynne Barth, who's been working as a Tahoe-based bridal consultant for the past 14 years.

Some 7,100 marriage licenses were issued in Lake Tahoe in 2006, with 4,200 of those purchased out of El Dorado County's South Lake Tahoe office, and the rest purchased for weddings on the Nevada side. Couples come from all around the country, and even overseas, although Barth says that 65 percent of her clientele comes from Northern California.

Where To Start?

Kari McElwee and Josh Terrell of Galt spent the better part of late 2006 planning their June 29 nuptials in Lake Tahoe, and did so without the help of a paid coordinator. The two knew they wanted to get married on a beach, and gave a lot of thought to locales that their many out-of-state guests would enjoy. Tahoe won out over Mexico, in part out of consideration for a pregnant bridesmaid.

It helps to be more easy going [when you] plan from a distance, since so much of it is hands-off, says McElwee, who teaches kindergarten in Stockton.

McElwee and her then-fianc turned first to the Internet, finding helpful sites such as tahoesbest.com and a Yahoo! group specifically for Tahoe brides. They cross-referenced venues and looked at photos online before narrowing their list to 12 sites. They visited each one in person, and found the process a little bit frustrating.

Either they were too expensive, or there was a lack of privacy, says McElwee, whose husband works for Anheuser-Busch. We really wanted somewhere relaxed but private, but where we could also take in the whole beauty of the place.

They hit the jackpot with Round Hill Pines, No. 12 on their list of stops and a family-owned property on the beach south of Zephyr Cove. The Nevada-side venue is amply wooded, offered privacy for the wedding ceremony&emdash;and no charge for parking.

McElwee and Terrell booked in November and opted for a Friday wedding date in June, partly to keep costs down. The Round Hill catered the meal for 100 guests, and the bride and groom ordered wedding cakes (and flowers for the bouquet) from a nearby Raley's.

The Round Hill does not have lodging, so the couple spent several months, and made a few more trips from Sacramento, deciding on options for their guests. They ultimately secured blocks of rooms at the Best Western Station House Inn and a Howard Johnson a few miles across the California state line in South Lake Tahoe.

The couple also integrated some personal touches. Terrell's uncle, a minister from Georgia, secured a single-day license to officiate at the ceremony, and his aunt sang. And they planned the 5 p.m. ceremony to correspond with the sunset.

The distance required a bit of faith, too, especially in lining up hair dressers and other vendors sight unseen. You're really trusting that people are being honest with you, McElwee says.

Area Wedding Professionals

With 72 miles of shoreline, Lake Tahoe covers a vast area and harbors diverse communities, from the more developed South Shore to the quieter resorts and beaches to the north and west. Still, the local wedding industry is tightly knit, which allows for appropriate checks and balances, says wedding musician Anne Roos.

What I always tell brides about the Tahoe area is that there is a significant wedding community that lives here year round, says Roos, who plays the Celtic harp. Because of that, when you hire vendors, you're actually hiring a team of people that knows each other, works together like a well oiled machine&emdash;and they don't mess up.

Roos herself is highly regarded among area wedding professionals. Her play list ranges from traditional wedding processionals to no fewer than 34 Beatles love songs. She has played at ceremonies and receptions in every conceivable setting, from the Wedding Chapel at Harveys casino to the upscale Edgewood Tahoe golf course.

Although the Tahoe community is relatively small, Barth acknowledges that planning can be overwhelming for out-of-town brides and grooms. Even a telephone consultation with a wedding planner can help point the couple in a few solid directions, she says.

Planning From Afar

Barth's husband, David, is a licensed marriage officiant. Couples can find other names through most Tahoe wedding vendors, she says, or from the El Dorado County or Douglas County (Nevada) courthouses. David Barth has wed couples amid a multitude of backdrops: in hot air balloons, on the ski slopes and on the lake.

We really suggest that if [couples] are [marrying] in the summer months, the late spring or early fall that they utilize what Tahoe has to offer: the lake, the mountains, the beach, the views, Lynne Barth says.

Reception Spots

South Lake Tahoe could do with a better variety of lakefront reception spots, Lynne Barth believes, although she enjoys steering clients to spots such as the Chart House or the Deerfield Lodge at Heavenly that are tucked among stately, tree-studded properties just a quick drive from the lake.

There are options for most pocketbooks, she says. One of her recent couples held their ceremony at Nevada Beach, which doesn't charge a use fee, then adjourned to a private room at the Chart House for dinner with their 20 guests.

At the high end is the Edgewood Tahoe golf course on the Nevada side of South Shore. It's a lot more costly, but you are really getting a spectacular location with phenomenal food and service, Lynne Barth says. Why come to Tahoe to utilize a banquet room or a casino, where you lose a lot of your guests to gambling and the sports bar?

Leave that question to Dave Beronio, manager of The Wedding Chapel at Harveys. It's a wedding and honeymoon location all rolled into one, he says. Harveys and its sister casino property, Harrah's, house a number of top-floor banquet rooms, boasting breathtaking views of the lake and mountains. Some couples get married in the chapel; others prefer to tie the knot on the nearby lakefront, then come back inside for the reception.

The nice thing is that we have so many varied offerings&emdash;flowers, photography, video, Beronio says. It's all located here with one call, one stop. It's as easy as that.

Beronio also runs his own bridal business, Lake Tahoe Wedding Ministries (tahoe-wedding.com), and has officiated at numerous outdoor ceremonies, including several on the ski slopes at Heavenly.

Usually, we try to get them off the skis, to a fabulous location, so they can turn to one another, he says. Then we can bring in barbecues on the mountains, or just a simple picnic lunch on the mountain right after the fact.

When Rhonda McDaniel of Rancho Cordova and her husband, Jim, exchanged vows in July, they were barefoot on the sands of Lakeside Beach in Stateline, Nev. The couple often vacationed in Tahoe while they were dating, so it was an easy call to plan to get married there, says McDaniel, who works in a medical office and is a part-time nursing student.

Planning the event from afar was no more work than a local wedding would have been, McDaniel believes. And the effort was offset by the pleasure of knowing their guests would be able to enjoy a mini-vacation. The bride did most of her research online, and found The Knot and its various forums to be the biggest help.

One of the best pieces of advice from a fellow Knottie: Go through a dry run with the hair stylist before the actual wedding day, even if it means an extra trip to Tahoe. I am so glad that I did because she did a horrible job and I immediately cancelled, says McDaniel. If I had never heard about the other bride's experience, I would have ended up looking terrible on my wedding day.

After their ceremony, the newlyweds hosted a reception for friends and family in the backyard of the vacation rental they secured through the Internet.

Kerry Hawk of Blue Sky Event and Travel Management often suggests home rentals, especially as a lodging alternative for the bride and groom's friends and family. Clients can also rent properties through her website, blueskyevents.biz.

Throughout the years, Hawk has coordinated just about every aspect of Tahoe wedding parties, from kayaking to remote coves for lunch or dinner to horse-drawn sleigh rides through the woods. When it comes to weddings on the lake itself, she is partial to the Safari Rose. The 80-foot yacht boasts leather and teak paneling, as well as a fully stocked bar.

When it comes to land-based transportation, Hawk employs a more common-sense approach. If the ceremony and reception are held in different locations, she hires tour buses or limousines to shuttle guests around. That helps ease traffic concerns around the lake. It also makes for safer roads, considering the heightened effects of alcohol in high altitude.

Lake Tahoe has something for everybody, Hawk says.