A process for continuously removing water in situ from an oxidative esterification reaction includes (a) conducting a first oxidative esterification reaction in a first reactor or reaction zone, wherein the total number of reactors or reaction zones is n and n is at least 2; (b) removing a crude product stream from the first reactor or reaction zone; (c) introducing the crude product stream to a distillation column to generate a column overheads stream and a column bottoms stream; (d) passing at least a portion of the columns bottoms stream to the product recovery zone; and (e) passing at least a portion of the column overheads stream to a subsequent reactor or reaction zone; and (f) repeating steps (a)-(e) for each subsequent reactor or reaction zone such that the number of distillation columns less than n, and wherein the at least a portion of the column overheads stream contains less than 1 weight percent (wt%) water based on the total weight of the at least a portion of the column overheads stream.