Maybe it’s because it’s so cold outside lately, but I’ve caught myself daydreaming about our honeymoon quite often this week. So I thought a blog post about honeymoon planning could be in order!

Alex and I had completely unrealistic ideas in our heads when we started talking about where we’d like to go for our honeymoon. I think our first concept was to go to Tahiti, then to Fiji, then to Australia – but we were going to stop in New Zealand on the way to Australia. I have done a decent amount of travel, and I do know how much things cost, but I was still blown away by the price tag for that trip. OOPS! We realized we would have to scale our honeymoon down if we were going to be able to afford food for the year after we get married. So Alex suggested traveling around Europe. His parents had done that, and he thought it might be fun. We already had a trip to Italy planned (which you can read about here if you’re interested), so we researched places like Greece, France and the UK. We also discussed Hawaii, but I went to Hawaii in 2000 and Alex wasn’t sure he liked the idea of going someplace I’ve already been.

I’m usually a do-it-yourself kind of travel planner. I’ve become pretty good at finding great deals online for airfare and hotels. But this was our honeymoon. I had big ideas in my head about getting upgraded to first-class and finding buckets of champagne in our hotel room. I knew I didn’t have a clue how to ensure any of those things might happen on my own, so I convinced Alex we should go to a travel agent. We wound up at Liberty Travel, where I had booked a previous trip to Tahiti and Bora Bora, and had a relationship with an agent named Kelly.

We told Kelly we were thinking about Hawaii, but we were much more interested in Europe. She was great – went through all the Hawaii literature with us from hotels to excursions. She also told us about how there is a direct flight to Honolulu from Newark, which after our experience with flying to Italy sounded pretty appealing. Then she went over everything for Europe, focusing on Greece because that’s what we were most interested in. Greece sounded AMAZING, and Liberty had a stopover in Paris that we could tack onto the trip for not a whole lot more, too.

Then Kelly told us about a few options we had not really considered before talking to her. She told us about Jade Mountain in St. Lucia and The Crane in Barbados. These were two places she had gone on her own honeymoon. They’re all-inclusive, but much more low-key and private than the all-inclusives you usually picture when you hear that term. All-inclusive is a VERY attractive option for a honeymoon – no worrying about having to pull out a wallet the whole time you’re there! Her point was that after a wedding, it might be not-so-relaxing to sit on a plane for 12 hours to get to your honeymoon destination. Heading to the Caribbean would put us on a (warm, sunny, not at all icy) beach a lot faster than heading to Hawaii or Europe.

Alex and I did not ultimately choose to go to the Caribbean on our honeymoon. But I’m sharing this information with all of you brides because I think these are great options, and they aren’t something you’re necessarily going to find out about by surfing the web. I have been to St. Lucia before, and that island is BEAUTIFUL – I would go back in a heartbeat, and I am actually contemplating taking Alex to the Jade Mountain resort for a weekend before the wedding just to escape all the craziness.

Hope all the honeymoon destination talk warmed you up for at least a few minutes!