How To Choose A Honeymoon Destination

We’re currently completely consumed in the whole wedding planning process. That’s not an exaggeration at all either. We have vendors and suppliers e-mailing us day and night about flowers, cars, decorations, invitations, hair and make-up, photography, videography and more, and on top of that we’re constantly online shopping for bridesmaid dresses, groomsman suits and all the tiny details like jewellery, ring boxes, bridal party gifts and flower girl headbards.

It can be super overwhelming!

The only thing getting us through the tedious part of planning is that fact that we’re also planning our honeymoon! And let’s be honest, that’s the fun part isn’t it!

Costa Rica (image found here)

It kind of feels like we’ve been thinking about and planning our honeymoon for pretty much as long as we have been planning the wedding. No matter how excited we are about our wedding day, travel planning is much more enjoyable and heaps easier than planning the wedding, so it’s an easy part to think about!

After months and months of craziness planning the wedding, our honeymoon is going to be a time for us to finally chill out, relax and just be together as husband and wife. Things definitely aren’t going to get any less crazy before the wedding, as we are currently in the lead up to Christmas and a January full of celebrations.

So if you’re also planning your dream honeymoon, here are a few things to think about when you’re choosing your destination.

In this post:

Book your honeymoon fantasy

Lots of couples have a perfect idea of what they want their honeymoon to be. It might be an over-water bungalow in Bora Bora or the Maldives, a multi-country adventure through Europe, an all inclusive adults only resort in Mexico or even a safari across Africa.

No matter what your dream honeymoon is, this is definitely what you should look into first and see if you can make it work. Your honeymoon is the perfect time to book your dream holiday and make that fantasy come true.

Bora Bora, French Polynesia

Make it exotic

We might have a little bit of an extreme opinion on this, but don’t make your honeymoon somewhere common or somewhere that you go regularly. It should be somewhere new and exciting, that you have always wanted to go to.

If you’ve been to Bali heaps of times, maybe steer clear of it for a honeymoon spot, you know?! If there’s somewhere you and your fiancee have always been talking about, no matter how hypothetically, explore the possibility of the destination!

Make it somewhere fresh and new that neither one of you have ever visited before, that way every memory and experience about the place will be just yours and the whole destination will be so special.

Our Best Day Ever

Don’t make it too complicated

This one is definitely coming straight from the heart and something we should have thought of before booking our flights. Planning a complicated itinerary with lots of different flights, hotels, visas, etc, is normally fun and exciting in the lead up to your holiday, but when you throw into the mix the complexities of planning a wedding at exactly the same time the honeymoon can easily get pushed to the side.

Try not to make your honeymoon more complicated than it needs to be. Think about staying in each place a little longer, choosing destinations that have direct flights and that you might understand the language of a little better. Trust the words of someone who is planning her most complicated itinerary to date of at the same time as a wedding, it is hard.

Amalfi Coast, Italy (image found here)

Consider the world wide weather at the time of your wedding

Chances are, you have chosen a perfect weather month for your wedding based on where you live in the world. In Melbourne, wedding season is generally between November and April, the summer months and one extra month either side to take advantage of the hopefully warm summer weather.

However, due to Australia’s isolated location, normally when it’s good weather here it’s winter in the rest of the world. Do some research into what the weather will be like at the time of your honeymoon. Remember that just because you’ve been planning that perfect European summer honeymoon, doesn’t mean it’s automatically going to be warm at the time of your wedding.

Even though that sounds so basic, it can be so easy to forget about the weather at your honeymoon destination when you’re so concerned about the weather on your wedding day.

How To Create A Travel Itinerary

Think about the location of your wedding

You might not even be holding your wedding in your home country, with the popularity of destination weddings increasing every year. It’s a great way to cut the guest list down a little and have the perfect romantic wedding that you might not be able to have in your home city.

Remember, while you’re thinking of the destination as just a wedding location many of your guests will be thinking of it as a holiday destination. If you’re having a destination wedding it might not be a good idea to honeymoon in the same place as your wedding, unless you want to be joined by half of your friends and family who have taken advantage of your perfect wedding place as a holiday getaway.

Consider moving on after a few days of celebrating with your loved ones to get that alone time that honeymooning is for. And of course, you also have to figure out how to get to your honeymoon destination from your wedding. For example, if you’re getting married on an island it may take a couple of extra flights and connections to get you to that honeymoon spot.

The visa requirements

Of course, the absolute last thing you’re thinking about when you’re planning your honeymoon is the visa requirements for your honeymoon destinations. Do not forget about them. You do not want to arrive in your honeymoon country only to be rejected by immigration at the boarder and sent straight back home.

Remember – many countries require visas to be done within a certain time frame and require your passport to be sent to the consulate to have a physical visa placed inside. At the very start of your honeymoon planning make sure you check this out and add it to your diary or to do list with a reminder of when you need to sort this out. Trust me, it will be the last thing on your mind.