Title: Making a scene : tropical island weddings : destination creation and the experience of place in the Cook Islands

Abstract: This paper considers tropical island weddings as one example of how place is conceptualised and enacted in tourism to the Cook Islands. Representations of the Cook Islands as a holiday destination are examined, alongside the reported experiences of tourists whose prime reason for travelling there was to marry and/ or honeymoon in the Cook Islands. An articulation of these representations and embodied experiences translates the sense of a non-specific tropical island destination into an exclusive and utopian sense of place. Even though Pacific islands are constructed through alluring visual representations as tropical island paradise destinations, their success relies as much on tourists’ embodied experiences of them.