6 Ways To Plan an Amazing Honeymoon on a Budget

Turns out, most of us are not made of money

by Jareesa Tucker McClure, Writing Fellow

If you google “wedding planning” or walk into a bookstore, you’ll find ample resources on how to plan a wedding. There are resources for small weddings, big weddings, destination weddings, theme weddings—you name it, someone has probably written about it. (Some of the information is better/less sexist than others, but you know… it’s there.) When I was planning my own wedding, I was thankful that there was so much information available. When I needed help setting an initial budget, or finding vendors, or getting ideas for decor, I could do my research and find some information that helped.

What wasn’t available was information on planning our honeymoon… particularly planning our honeymoon on a budget. Most of the information that I could find generally involved glossy lists of top ten destinations or advertisements for specific resorts. Sure, it’s nice to have ideas on where to go, but I was looking for more information. Should we take our honeymoon right after the wedding or later? How do we get the best deal? How do we even figure out what type of honeymoon we want? And how the hell do we pay for a big trip while we’re also paying for our wedding? We really had no clue, so we had to just wing it.

I’m a mega researcher, so I spent weeks looking at every resort in the Caribbean, Central America, and Hawaii, comparing prices and reading reviews. We knew that we wanted to take a trip right after our wedding, but deals are few and far between during Spring Break season. After a lot of conversation and reviews from friends, we decided to do a mini-moon right after our wedding and a longer trip a few months after our wedding. A random browsing of LivingSocial led us to a fantastic deal on a New Orleans B&B for our mini-moon, where we spent three days immediately after our wedding. After much research, a colleague’s rave reviews for Sandals in St. Lucia led us to book a week at Sandals Halcyon Beach. Looking back, we absolutely made the right honeymoon choices for us—we got a chance to relax after the wedding, found some great deals, and had a great time on both trips. But the stress of planning took some of the joy out of it.

A few months ago, we hosted an open thread where we discussed all things honeymoon related. I learned a ton in the thread and I thought, “This is the thread I wish I’d had when I was planning our honeymoons.” So APW readers, I’m going to do you all a solid and share with you some of the best tips from the thread if you’re planning your honeymoon on, you know, a reasonable budget—AKA you are not made of money.

SIX WAYS TO PLAN A HONEYMOON ON A BUDGET

Factor Your Honeymoon into Your Overall Wedding Budget

My husband and I paid for 90 percent of our wedding ourselves, and 100 percent of our honeymoons. We did great with our wedding budget—we actually went under-budget (yay!)—and some of that saved money did go toward honeymoons. However, I wish we’d thought about the costs all together instead of thinking of them as separate. One reader smartly noted that including your honeymoon budget in your overall wedding budget, you can make more informed decisions about how you spend money:

I can spend this $4,000 on the honeymoon, or I can spend it on a full bar (rather than wine and beer). You can almost always make decisions that reduce the price of the wedding and redirect that money to something else.

Like, you know, a day at a luxe beach.

Use Miles or Points to Defray Costs

We had enough points for our round-trip airfare to New Orleans for our mini-moon, which was great. But if you want to maximize your miles, consider using a rewards credit card to make wedding purchases. One reader said that they used this technique with great success:

The credit card had a minimum spend of $5,000 to earn 50,000 points, but we had $5,000 of planned, budgeted expenses, so we used the credit card to put wedding expenses on, and then paid it off every month. We used the points for our flights, which was awesome and made it possible to have a nicer honeymoon.

Genius!

Travel Off-Season

William and I got married in March, which is guaranteed to be a chilly month in Minnesota, so honeymooning in a warmer location was a requirement for us. March is also prime Spring Break season, and prices for the locations we were interested in were astronomical. We shifted our honeymoon to the end of May and were able to save hundreds of dollars compared to if we’d traveled in March. If you don’t want to delay your honeymoon, consider destinations that are off-season to maximize your savings.

Try Deal Sites and Hotel Alternatives

I love a good deal, especially when it comes to travel. Sites like Groupon and LivingSocial feature lots of great deals on hotels, B&Bs, and resorts. We found an excellent deal for a beautiful New Orleans B&B and wound up saving 50 percent off their published rates. Sites like Airbnb or VRBO can also be cheaper alternatives than staying in a hotel or a resort, and while that may seem obvious, lots of people forget you can Airbnb your honeymoon. Reader Hannah noted that she “snagged a Groupon for a tiny lodge in Costa Rica.” She said, “I had enough airline miles to get us to Central America and Groupon seemed like a pretty low-stress and economical way to throw an awesome trip together.”

Get Trip Insurance

I was not a trip insurance person until last year, when my mother-in-law had a heart attack the day before we left for a week in Dubai. Talk about a wake-up call. Thankfully she was well enough for us to take our trip and visit her afterward, but we did consider canceling our trip. Had we done so, we would have lost over a thousand dollars, which would have really hurt. If you’re putting a lot of effort and money into your honeymoon, it makes sense to spend a little bit more and insure it. Make sure you shop around and understand what coverage you’re buying and that it meets your needs. (AKA, read the fine print on these things.) Also consider getting insurance that covers you if you get hurt or sick during the trip. One reader recounted her story of using travel insurance on her honeymoon to Italy:

Our recent trip to Italy… turned out terribly when my husband ended up in the hospital for five days for what started as probably food poisoning and ended up as sepsis. I had gotten trip insurance for the first time ever, and it was so helpful—both in the moment in terms of reducing the stress of the ordeal to some degree, as well as meaning we paid nothing out of pocket for changing our flights, and we expect to get another few thousand back for extra hotel costs and all the medical costs, once our claims are processed.

Consider Alternatives to the “Huge Trip”

A lot of people have the idea that a honeymoon has to be a huge, once in a lifetime trip with your spouse. Maybe you aren’t interested in that, or maybe you don’t have the budget—and that’s okay! Forget what society expects and do what you and your partner want to do for your honeymoon. Maybe that means taking a smaller trip, or a road trip, or going camping. Maybe you do a mini-moon and then the huge trip months later. Or maybe your “trip” is a staycation in your town, complete with a hotel stay and visiting all the tourist sites. Collaborate with your partner on your shared vision for your honeymoon, and go for the type of trip that will satisfy you both.

Reader Alanna shared that she and are husband and doing a staycation, which sounds spot-on:

For our honeymoon we’re doing a hotel vacation in our own city (Toronto!). We’re going to do all the touristy things (CN tower, aquarium, Aga Khan Museum, shopping), and eat at fancy restaurants. Maybe we’ll have a spa day.

Reader Meg and her husband went a different route, visiting Las Vegas for a convention:

We ended up doing the Star Trek convention in Las Vegas for our honeymoon. It was something we both loved, and due to his fiancé visa he couldn’t leave the country yet, so we had to stay domestic. It was great because we got to bond over something we both adore, but we were experiencing a conference together for the first time.

APW READERS, WHAT OTHER TIPS DO YOU HAVE? WHAT DO YOU WISH YOU HAD KNOWN WHEN PLANNING YOUR HONEYMOON?

7 Things You Need to Know to Pick Your Wedding Date

Psst: You don't have to know RIGHT away

by Meg Keene, CEO & Editor-In-Chief

Here is this wild thing that happens the second you announce your engagement (and before you’re even close to when you can pick your wedding date). People (apparently hearing only static in their brains) look at your brand new ring, and ask you, “So when is the big day?” I’m never sure if they think you might have planned a wedding before you decided you were getting married… or if they think you pulled together the whole thing during the half hour car ride to your mom’s house to show off your ring(s). But since picking your wedding date is no longer as easy as calling your local house of worship and asking them what Saturday in June they have free, we polled our (super smart) readers and came up with some critical things you need to consider when you want to pick your wedding date.

Let’s start with what is, for most of us, the be-all and end-all of starting to pick your wedding date:

WHAT TO CONSIDER WHEN YOU WANT TO PICK YOUR WEDDING DATE

YOUR VENUE’S CALENDAR: Knowing where you want to get married is almost always a top-level concern when you want to pick your wedding date. Sure, you might really want to get married on 7/7/17, but you have to find a venue that’s free that day, so wait a second before you monogram that date on all your silver. The truth is that venues, particularly ones that are in high demand (or have low prices) can book up way in advance. One reader explained it this way:

We found a venue in our budget that would hold our huge guest list and were like, “Okay when’s the next available summer Saturday you have? Two summers from now? Okay. Let us sign the paperwork.”

Yeah, it was a long engagement and the venue basically picked the date for us. But it was fine. It gave us a date to plan for VERY early on and give our traveling loved ones plenty of heads up. It also made picking other vendors easier.

DON’T ASK FOR (TOO MUCH) ADVICE: It’s a good idea to consult your must-haves for potential conflicts before you are about to pick your wedding date (the people you would be devastated if they couldn’t come), but once you’ve got that date, resist the urge to ask people what they think about it. Frankly, once the date is the date, the less input you receive, the better:

The fewer people who you give input on the date, the better the process. Remember, it is highly unlikely you will have 100 percent attendance, even if you let everyone vote on the date, because things come up. (Pregnancies, you name it.) So don’t tie yourself into knots about finding a date everyone in your lives likes, especially if that date is many months (if not over a year) in the future.

THINK ABOUT THE SEASON: Maybe you’ve always dreamed of a June wedding, or perhaps you want to get married in a snowstorm. Or maybe you just want to get married during one of your partner’s law school breaks so you can go on a honeymoon (raises hand!). Regardless of what your dream season is and why, thinking about the time of year can help you narrow down dates and venues that will work. Keep in mind that you can often get good deals during the winter, but that spring and fall have become increasingly popular wedding seasons, so you’re probably not going to save any cash on that super cool Halloween wedding.

And in case you’ve maybe started to convince yourself that your wedding will only be amazing if it’s during (insert your favorite season here), remember that every season has its drawbacks: summers can be hot in formal clothing, winters can be rainy/snowy depending on where you live, spring and fall are sometimes unpredictable. TL;DR: There’s no magic day that is going to be better than all the days of the year, so don’t let picking your wedding date hinge on something that might not happen, anyway. Even if the Farmer’s Almanac says otherwise.

THINK ABOUT HOW LONG YOUR ENGAGEMENT WILL BE: There are advantages and disadvantages to short (and long) engagements. If you have four months, you’ll power through those decisions like you have a fire under your ass… because you will. If you have two years, at some point you’ll start to wonder if there actually is a wedding in your future. So, if you have a choice, pick a wedding planning timeline that works for you. (And hey, if you’re an over-planner and chronic worrier, it might be easier to be done in three months than to have three years to obsess.)

CONSIDER YOUR ALSO ENGAGED FRIENDS AND LOVED ONES: I know, I know. We’re not supposed to be the sort of shallow people who think about who is getting married first, but… also… maybe you are? (Shhh.) David and I had been engaged for an (endless-seeming) year-plus, when three months before our wedding date his ex called him to say she’d gotten engaged that week, and was getting married next weekend, and could we spend a bunch of money to fly across the country to come? I’m embarrassed to say that smoke might have billowed from my ears, because HOLY SHIT NO CUTS IN LINE.

Of course, there is no etiquette rule on the book that the one that puts a ring on it first, walks down the aisle first. So, if you know that you want to get married before (or after) your sister, or your BFF, or your cousin, consider that as you think about dates.

Likewise, if you and a close family member want a similar group of people to fly into your hometown from all over the country during, say, the summer of 2018… consider trying to pick dates together, so people can fly in just once, and party it up twice.

IF YOU’RE NOT FLEXIBLE ON DATES, BE FLEXIBLE ON… EVERYTHING ELSE: If you are completely, 100 percent set on one specific date, realize that you’ll probably have to be flexible on both vendors and venue… or at least come prepared with early deposits in hand.

We were the weirdos who had a special date picked before we officially got engaged. I’m a chemist and the husbandperson is a mathematician—being blerds (Black nerds) is a big part of our lives and our relationship. Randomly in late 2014, we were talking about when we’d like to get married and throwing around dates, and he suggested Pi Day (March 14th). I checked a calendar and realized it was on a Saturday in 2015… and it felt like fate. We looked at each other and just knew that was the right day. Another date was not an option, so we wound up booking our photographer and venue a year in advance, and before we officially got engaged cause we didn’t want to miss out on our dream date or our dream venue.

CONSIDER LOCAL EVENTS: Maybe the city you live in always has a film festival on one weekend, or there’s a big sporting event that always happens the same time of the year—or whatever. You might not be able to remember everything, but definitely consult an events calendar to see what is and isn’t going on around the date that you choose, and plan accordingly.

I won’t lie and pretend that figuring out how to pick your wedding date is stress free. It takes wedding planning from the nebulous “Oh wouldn’t it be nice if we could do XYZ” and puts it firmly in the realm of “Holy crap, this is happening.” But the reality is finalizing the date is often easier than you’d think. Because as it turns out, the venue you want only has one date free. Or there are only two weeks during the year where you could get time off to go on a honeymoon. Or because your mom wants nothing more than for you to get married in your hometown church at Christmas time.

Whatever the reason, when you get right down to it, your date often picks itself. And sure, that means you are no longer planning all the weddings on your Pinterest board. But it means you’re finally planning your wedding. And that’s pretty great.

(Bonus: Now you know when your anniversary will be. And the big secret is that anniversaries are the best holidays, because it’s the holiday that you earn by caring for each other. Plus, sex.)

Memories of Us: A Prompted Wedding Journal

Memories of Us: A Prompted Wedding Journal

BY KRISTIN IN IN THE OFFICE, MAIN ON FEBRUARY 16, 2017

Moments after I finished the real wedding interview for the blog, I sent Mrs. Emily Thomas an email with a flurry of excitement and a million exclamation points. The process of filling out the questions brought me right back to my wedding day, and I immediately knew that I would treasure having these answers forever. I also knew that we needed to figure out how to give this gift of memory capturing to ALL our brides. While we can’t feature every reader’s wedding on Southern Weddings (gah, I wish we could), we want to give everyone the opportunity to remember and record this special season of life. Our solution? Meet: Memories of Us: A Prompted Wedding Journal

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This sweet prompted journal covers everything from your engagement to the emotional whirlwind of your wedding day, to your honeymoon, to the sweet early days of newlywed life. We know all these memories are precious and we don’t want you to forget a thing! The prompts are inspired by the real wedding interview from the SW blog and print magazine and encourage you to capture all the moments (both big and small) of your marriage journey. We hope that your journal becomes a keepsake for years to come!

Every single one of my girlfriends who gets engaged gets a Memories of Us journal as a gift from KPW and me. Why? Because as someone who self-identifies as an “anti-journaler’ I love this little memory keeper so very much!! The prompts make it feel less like a ‘journal’ (important for someone who is anxious at the thought of free-writing) and more like answering the best and most personal questionnaire. (There are also extra blank pages to capture your feelings and other details if you are a journal kind of gal.)

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After getting engaged, I was bombarded with people who told me “good luck, you won’t remember a single thing about your wedding day.” As a gal who had been looking forward to getting married since the ripe old age of four, this was less than encouraging. I knew our wedding season would be a whirlwind, but I was determined to remember as many moments as possible, and I want the same for all my best friends and for all of you. 

I’m grateful that the Memories of Us: A Prompted Wedding Journal is one of my Southern Weddings claims to fame. And even more grateful that our future kids and grandkids will be able to flip back through our wedding memory journal and giggle over the missing candle incident and understand why the first few chords of Strawberry Wine always make me burst into tears.

Happy memory capturing, belles!

WRITTEN WITH LOVE BY KRISTIN