Yes, you read it correctly. Plan your honeymoon BEFORE you plan your wedding. It may sound like a funny thing to do because you don’t do the honeymoon until AFTER the wedding. So, why plan it before, you might ask? Well, the answer is, “You have set aside the money for THE vacation of you and your love’s dream before you start in the crucial steps of wedding planning. This is where the numbers add up quickly. 

Now days, the excitement of getting engaged comes with all of the fun planning you always dreamed abou,t from the showers, bachelorette/bachelor party, venue, decor, dress, suits, food, hair/make up, and all the other tiny details that bring your day together. When planning a wedding, things add up quickly, and before you and your fiance realize it, you’re maxed out!

So what about the honeymoon?  The result is you go dump out the penny jar to see what you have left and start saving as much as possible. Then, you use what little you have left to try to make the best out of a vacation that is meant to celebrate your commitment to each other and the new adventures you will be embarking on in the years to come. 

This is where the benefit of planning the honeymoon before planning the wedding comes into play. This trip is important. It is a trip that kicks off your new adventure together and celebrates the commitment you just made to each other. Therefore, you should want to go all out and go to places you have never been, do activities you both have always dreamed of, and enjoy the moments of being newlyweds with no worries or responsibilities for a little bit. 

Why wouldn’t you want to be able to book your dream vacation to Italy, to drink endless amounts of wine while looking at the beautiful scenery, or enjoy cocktails on an island with white sand and clear blue water surrounding it, or explore the cliffs of Northern Ireland, or go down under to Australia, or mountain climbing, or doing whatever both of your hearts desire. Life gets chaotic, and it is easy to to push off that dream vacation for a so called better time, but you know in your future there may be kids that come into the picture, or animals, or you become so focused on work that those vacation days end up disappearing because you think you are too busy to ever leave. 

So it’s simple. Plan that trip of a lifetime with the love of your life. Then, once the trip is booked, you’ll know the new budget for your wedding, and you can work with that. Yes, it may be a lot smaller then the original amount, but I promise you, you can and will make it work, and it will be worth it once you jump on that plane, car, or boat to get you and your new honey to your dream place with a break from reality. 

 

 

“Actually, the best gift you could have given her was a lifetime of adventures… “

– Lewis Carroll ( Alice in Wonderland)