15 Pointers for a 30 Day Honeymoon (or Trip)

Planning a 30 day long honeymoon?  Or maybe just your first long trip with a loved one/random human?  We have some advice for you (15 items exactly)—and some may be a tad more applicable if you’re going with a love interest.  Sorry, we write about what we know ;)

We aren’t the type that dreamed of their wedding day.  In fact, our honeymoon may have been the “dream,” especially for John.  He always took month long trips around major life milestones.  Good news:  marriage = major life milestone.  Sarah won’t lie—she had dreamed of being extra attractive for a day and getting her picture taken, but the details?  No idea.  However, when it came to where she wanted to go—she had lots of details!  That’s why it may not come as a surprise that when marriage was on the table, most of the talk had to do with our future honeymoon.  

Confession:  We booked our honeymoon before John even proposed.  Crazy, right?! 

1.     Pick a date/time.  Hint:  It helps if you know your wedding day.  For us, we chose the day after our wedding because we would be in a great travel hub—Denver.  If we had been closer to home, we would recommend delaying your trip by at least a day or two after the wedding.  Having time to get settled, be together, and pack is something to take advantage of!  Also take into account your work—will that be an okay time to be gone for a long period of time?  Is it your busiest time?  If you need to wait, wait.  However, don’t make excuses.  Now is the time—make sure you get your honeymoon, you've clearly earned it.  There will always be a reason to wait or a better time to do it, but guess what—if travel is on your heart, do it!  You never know what tomorrow will bring.

Our today:  A wedding.  Our tomorrow:  A 30 day honeymoon.

2.     Make sure your employer is aware and approves, and that you have enough vacation time.  Life advice: make yourself a necessity at your job.  Also, make sure they know it’s for your honeymoon (or other special occasion). It only happens once in your life (we hope!).  If you're negotiating a job, be up front about the time you'll need off.  For us, we did have to take the time unpaid, but budgeted for that.  Sarah had been asked to return to her teaching job, and came back on the condition that she could have the month off for her wedding.  John explained that he was getting married, it wasn’t really negotiable (he was prepared to follow through…make sure that’s something you can do before you make idle threats).  The trip is that much better when you know you have a job to come back to ;)

We need our jobs!

3.     The fun part:  Where do you want to go?  You’re going to have 30 days to explore, we recommend picking a region that you want to see.  For us the obvious choice was Europe.  Sarah shared her dream place—Italy--with John, and he helped mold the plan.  Paris, France was an easy add on (hello City of Love), and John wanted to get in some new countries, too:  Monaco and Belgium.  Thanks to research, we also added Iceland.  We were both excited about all of these places which is important!  There’s 2 of you, make sure you’re both on the same page.  Then: dream!

There's a whole world out there--and we want to see it all!

4.     Research!  Now that you have an idea of where you want to go, start researching.  What kind of route should you prepare?  What sorts of places will you stay in?  How long do you want in each place?  What are must-sees?  What airlines have deals you might like to take advantage of?  For us, Icelandair was the BEST choice.  They let you extend your layover with no additional cost, and had the cheapest price from Denver to Paris.  Hello additional country!  Part of research can be talking to friends or experienced travelers—steal their knowledge!

Mimosas help during this time!

5.     The not so fun part:  Budget.  Be realistic (this is something we struggle with when it comes to travel).  John makes great spreadsheets and we started adding up our travel expenses:  transportation, flights, food, lodging, sight-seeing expenses, and other excursions.  We recommend OVERestimating  (what’s the worst that could happen?  You’ll have leftover funds?  We like that worst case scenario outcome).  We also had to take into account our wedding expenses, and our monthly expenses/bills since we wouldn’t be having income for a month. 

6.     Figure out if a credit card is a good idea for you (if it isn’t, skip this step).  For us, we wanted to “take advantage” of the large amounts of money we would be spending on a wedding and a honeymoon.  At the time, CapitalOne offered the best rewards for us:  a year of no interest (we liked this because we knew we could pay it off in a year without feeling the pressure of paying it right away), a bonus number of points if you spent a certain amount in the first few months (or month), high enough limit, rental car insurance, no international fees, and the card earned rewards.  Our hope was to somehow get a free trip out of this.  Did this happen?  No, but it still worked well.  While we realized we still didn’t spend enough to  get a free trip, we did spend enough to get cash value back to subtract from our balance.  What we wish we had thought of:  a lot of little places we went to only took cash or wanted a card with a chip.  We should have brought X amount of money to exchange as taking money out at ATMS with our bank cards racked up HUGE international fees ($5 a transaction, plus whatever the ATM charged….ridiculous).  So bring cash, and exchange it!

Yay! Money!

7.     Write out your plan:  1) it’s fun and 2) organization is fun!  John gets full credit for this plan!

"The Plan"

8.     Purchase things!  This is the scariest part for Sarah.  Once you have a plan, you have the time off, and you have your budget, it’s time to put it into action.  Purchase the plane tickets, train tickets (Europass was our best bet), and start making plans.

9.     Communicate & delegate.  If you’re planning a 30 day trip while planning a wedding then you’re probably exhausted and stressed.  John did most of the honeymoon planning while Sarah did most of the wedding planning (she had a ton of help, though!  Honestly, without all of the help, it would have literally been pretty pictures with no guests, no décor, etc.).  Sarah also communicated that she wanted a few dates on the honeymoon.  I know it sounds needy and not necessary—but for her, it meant a lot to have some surprises.  John did this way too well (cooking class, opera in Paris, and a gondola ride).  Looking back advice:  we should have brought ideas for places to stay in each city.  Once we were on the honeymoon Sarah started to help and realized how overwhelming planning was.  We would spend our evenings trying to plan our next place to stay.  Now with all the options like Airbnb, VRBO, and hostels—have some ideas.  Don’t book all of the places in advance so that you can be flexible and have options to stay longer in a place or leave sooner than anticipated.  But also don’t have 0 options and be forced to choose places with bed bugs—gross. 

Us just talking about technology ^_^

10.   Discuss Technology.  Will you be bringing an international phone or change your service plan while you’re there?  We didn’t, which meant we needed a plan for finding our way around.  We wound up relying a lot on wifi each night.  We brought an iPhone and iPod that we kept in airplane mode.  We’d take pictures of maps to our hostels, and look them up while at our temporary home.  We’d Google places/restaurants from our phones during that time, too.  It worked well for us, except for when Sarah got left behind on the metro—no phone, no money, and no ID.  Thankfully, we somehow read each others’ minds, which brings us to our next point:

11. Have an emergency plan.  If someone gets lost or left, what’s your plan?  Where will you meet?  Talk about this.  Seriously.  Then be calm if it happens.  Our solution: John got off at the next metro station, and Sarah saw him on the platform and also got off.  Then he bought her ice cream.

12. Pack smartly and drop off your luggage at your lodging as soon as possible when you arrive in each destination.  We would switch to a smaller backpack (yes, even smaller in John's opinion) for our waters, sunscreen, jackets, etc.  Now that you're weightless, run freely through the streets and see the sights and take in the culture!

13. Realize that your partner is human, which means you need to have reasonable expectations.  We found out that John won’t always know the exact way to the lodging, and that Sarah’s bag is actually really heavy.  Don’t get mad at each other about this—encourage one another, and enjoy your time.  Stuff is going to come up because you’re out of your comfort zone and in a foreign place—that’s awesome!  Embrace it.

2 Humans AND partners right here--Embracing! 

14.   Be flexible.  Things will come up.  That’s the fun of it—you can figure it out together!  Plans might change, you might miss seeing the Sistine Chapel, Naple’s might be gross, the restroom may be strange, you may not be able to locate crepes every time, and so many other things—that’s ok.  All of those things did occur, and they didn’t cause us to hate each other (phew!), but rather we grew closer and had other amazing experiences.  You’re on a trip—for 30 days1

We have fun--while being flexible!

15. Enjoy every second of it.  Take pictures, see things you may not have chosen yourself, be in the moment, savor the food, try to speak the language, immerse yourself in a new culture, mess up, laugh, be awed, touch everything, trespass at your own risk, be adventurous, try something new, spend that extra money to have the experience, budget, pack your lunches, stay up late to chase the Northern Lights, wake up early to go all day, drink the wine, explore the festivals, wander until you’ve found what you didn’t even know you wanted, and do it all together.

Say "I Do" to Adventure!

If you have questions, let us know!  Where would you go for 30 days?  Who would you go with?  What advice would you add?

Chasing Time Zones,

John and Sarah