5 Tips for Planning Your Honeymoon
Charlotte Wedding Photographer
Planning any vacation can be a daunting task, let alone the most important vacation of your life! Even though my husband and I had a good idea of what we wanted, it was still hard to figure out where to start. These 5 tips (#6 is a bonus!) can hopefully begin to point you in the right direction and ease some of the anxiety that goes along with planning, because when it all boils down to it, this is supposed to be fun!…right?
- Determine what type of traveler you and your partner are. Do you want to relax or be adventurous? Do you like warm weather or cold weather? Do you want a beach, city or mountains? Asking yourselves these questions will help you to narrow down your options. Keep in mind that your answer might differ from your partner’s, so compromising is very important to making the trip special for the both of you.
- Research your top locations! This is super My husband and I had always said that we were going to go to Australia for our honeymoon. However, once I started looking into it I realized that the time period that we would be there was the worst possible time to go there. What is the weather like? A lot of the top honeymoon spots are located in areas that are affected by hurricanes or monsoons certain times of year. It would definitely be a shame to spend the money for a trip that gets rained out 6 or 7 days. Are there any special events or festivals going on? This could be a positive and a negative. On the one hand, it would be amazing to see and have an authentic cultural experience. On the other, hotels may be more expensive and there may be large crowds.
- Determine your budget. Do you want to splurge or would you prefer to stay within a certain budget? After shelling out a large amount of money for a wedding, it may be more feasible to stay relatively local. Keep in mind that airline fees can add up quickly to certain locations. Don’t forget about credit card and airline points. Now is a great time to cash those in!
- Figure out what paperwork is needed. Some places require you to have a travel visa that you may have to apply for prior to your trip. Make sure your passport is valid for AT LEAST a year after the dates of your travel. Definitely check with a travel specialist or online to determine whether or not vaccinations are required. This is also important to include in your budget, as certain vaccinations can get pricey!
- Decide when you want to leave. The most common answer to this question is right after the wedding. This can be fantastic because it is a great way to de-stress from all the wedding crazy and just relax with your new husband/wife. However, it is also possible to delay your honeymoon to a later date. Since my husband and I are both in the wedding business, taking the amount of time off that we wanted to right in the middle of busy wedding season just wasn’t an option. So we planned our honeymoon during the slow months to fully enjoy our time and not be worried about what we were missing. What I didn’t realize, was that having the time in-between the wedding and honeymoon was HUGELY helpful because we still had something to look forward to. Let me tell you, post-wedding depression is real! I found that still having something to plan definitely helped me come off the wedding craziness into real life.
- Bonus! Plan well ahead of time. Planning the honeymoon at least 6 months before you plan to leave is very important. You want to make sure you don’t leave it until the last minute, because you may end up paying more or forgetting something. Going back to tip #2, you may even decide that you want to choose a different location so having that extra time to plan is important.
Don’t forget to have fun! Planning your honeymoon can be one of the most exciting times in your lives. It is important to enjoy the time you are spending planning your trip because it is still quality time that you are spending with your partner. Enjoy planning all your activities or even just discussing all the things you want to see. Maybe you will even learn something about your fiancé that you didn’t already know.
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