Some recent efforts to mitigate coastal damage caused by flooding and surge during storm events have focused on the use of coastal vegetation as a means of inducing wave energy dissipation. Unfortunately, no comprehensive method is used to account for vegetation in nearshore wave models. This work outlines the development of a framework that can be used to better model vegetation in a variety of coastal settings. Numerous sets of test runs were conducted to estimate the amount of wave dissipation caused by coastal vegetation, and the uncertainty and accuracy of the methods and results are analyzed. The overall results show a tendency to overestimate the dissipative effects of certain types of vegetation. Comparisons between model runs conducted with the STWAVE numerical model also demonstrate that the friction factors typically used by coastal wave models do not accurately account for the effects of vegetation on wave heights.