Help! Where Should We Book Our Honeymoon?
I wanted to write a post specifically about Honeymoons – more importantly planning and booking them. This is half a rant, and half a cry for help.
Sharon and I are currently at the point of having to plan the honeymoon. Our wedding is in August so we are hoping to pick up a good deal or two by both booking early, and doing so in the January Sales.
Wanted - 1 winning Lottery Ticket to avoid this!
- Frustration Point 1
We have a small budget (well, so it seems compared to the prices I am seeing for anything halfway resembling a honeymoon). I have been very fortunate that my parents have offered to front up to a grand towards the honeymoon, which takes a lot off of our minds with the overall budget. The Downside is that it comes with a condition – I have to lose approximately 3 stone in order to qualify for said contribution.
Now, I have been losing weight for about 10 months and up to Christmas had managed to lose just over 3 stone already. So I know it can be done.
My problem is that the next 3 will be more difficult. Combined by the fact that my work days are 12 hours long does not leave me a lot of time after coming home, having dinner and spending some time with Sharon to then dedicate to exercise. It’s very frustrating and one of the biggest barriers to motivation I have ever experienced.
- Frustration Point 2
We can’t decide where to go. There are so many lovely places to go. Most of the ones that make obvious honeymoon choices are out of bounds (either too expensive like the Far East, or the hurricane season for the Carribean). At the moment we have some possibilities with The Amalfi Coast or the Greek Islands, but for our budget you don’t exactly get an obvious honeymoon treatment – often these places end up more expensive than an all-inclusive option to one of the above. It hardly seems fair.
I want an element of luxury, but all of the options we seem to find that give us good value for money end up being mass package holidays, and I really REALLY don’t want to get caught up on one of their planes for anything more than a few hours. Insecurity about my size and whether I’d even fit into one of their tin-can planes also doesn’t help my anxiety.
- Frustration Point 3
Finding deals is so bloody hard. Based on the above, we can’t always say exactly where in the world we want to go – we are relatively open to suggestions! However every bloody site I go to requires you to say exactly where you want to go, sometimes even down to the resort. Going into Travel Agents in person doesn’t help you much here – you just get fed the same package deals over and over.
What I want is a travel site that lets me put in much more open-ended criteria for destination. Actually asks me a budget, and ideally has a specific area for honeymoons so that we can see if any of the potential offerings are likely to show us some bonhomie once we get there.
So this is my call out to you, Staggered readers. Can you help Sharon and I get some focus and have the Honeymoon we both deserve? We have been together for over 4 years now; our Honeymoon will be the first holiday we have been able to afford to take. We want to make it last a lifetime of memories. If you have any must-know tricks, ideas or Travel Agent friends and family that know where to get a great Honeymoon deal then please let me know on the comments below.
/Rant over
STD
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I know the feeling. We have been given what we thought was a nice budget for our Honeymoon. However with a February wedding finding somewhere that will be hot without costing the price of a small car is tricky.
I would love a web site (or a decent personal shopper type person in a travel agent who isn’t on commission) where you could say “I have this much, where can I go”
The World is a big place and I don’t want to trawl through list of destinations thinking “we could go there” only to find that it is the rainy season or it’s way out of our budget and we are back to square one.
So, here I am seconding the call for a Holiday site that can tell you where you can go for the money you have, not expect you to know where you can go first.
Hiya
You can try Martin at SW16 Travel – we found him at a wedding fair after months of looking at all the usual travel sites for a reasonably priced honeymoon in the Med… He found us a great hotel, all inclusive, flights, ATOL protected etc. and none of it at extra cost for us. Tell him what you want and your budget and he’ll do it all for you :)
Steph x
Hey there, we too had budget restraints on our honeymoon, we booked ours below and upgraded to the adult only part (so no kids!), being able to pay in monthly instalments really helped too. I also emailed the resort direct in advance and told them it was our honeymoon and they arranged a special meal for us in a secluded area plus champagne in the room on arrival and a ‘just married’ banner on our door. What I found was, as with the wedding planning, is mention honeymoon and costs rise, however book your holiday and contact the resort direct afterwards and you get a lot better service!
http://www.fiestahotelgroup.com/en/Hotels/Destination/America/Dominican-Republic/Punta-Cana/The-Royal-Suites-Turquesa-by-Palladium booked via Thomsons.
Thanks all for the great comments, you have really helped a lot. I’ll be sure to give you all an update once we get it settled once and for all!
My honeymoon story is a rant we went to Italy and had a great time in the end. But we was well ahead of the game or so we thought. We booked ahead about 18 months I think via expedia. We paid our deposit or at least gave our card details. As per any holiday a few weeks before you go we had to ring with our insurance details.
Now this is when the games started my wife gave our booking ref number over. The reply came ” sorry we cannot find you on the system ” the girl looked agian still no joy. She asked a supervisor no luck there. They promised to ring us back the next day. Several days later they called back sorry you did’nt book with us ” we replied ” yes we did ” they asked ” prove it “.
This is when we discovered they had not taken the deposit and when we called we was basically told ” hard luck “. We wrote to the MD with the name of the person we spoke to when booking and produced phone records. The message from the MD was even sorry your not on our records. So in the end we had to book through anotother site flights and hotels as seperate items. Plus with no transfers included in the price to the tune of an extra £600 and one very expensive taxi ride.
So as great as the internet is my advise for your honemoon would be no matter what the destination is play safe and use your local travel agent.
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