Mrs. Flamingo, Montreal, Canada
Age and Occupation: 25, Graphic Designer
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 30, Nursing Student
Engagement Date: December 2004
Wedding Date: June 21, 2008
Venue: Imperia Hotel (modern chic hotel)
About Me: I am a passionate designer who loves anything pretty. I heart all paper products (eco-friendly of course). My passion revolves around anything considered glamour; vintage and modern. In my free time, I love reading Martha mags, designing jewelry and making a pit-stop at Starbucks for a chai latte. I'm also a chocoholic at heart and my family drools over my homemade truffles.
Minimooning It
June 10th, 2008 @ 9:28 am by Mrs. Flamingo
There are only 11 days until the wedding and we haven’t booked our honeymoon yet. We’ve had endless amounts of discussions on where we should go. It started with Paris, Italy and there was mention of Disney, we talked about going down south… but we abandoned all those ideas.
As the wedding gets closer and closer I see the bills piling up and it’s stressing me out a little. Mr. Flamingo is in school full time and because we are paying for the majority of the wedding (with some help from my parents), a honeymoon done to our liking would be too expensive at the moment.
I love travelling and even though I put my dream of visiting Europe on the back burner, our honeymoon will be the last chance to travel before we go ahead and start our flamingo family. We will have a honeymoon, just at a later date. It will simply allow us to get back on our feet. So, I thought a minimoon could be a great idea - maybe a couple of nights somewhere local where we can relax and enjoy our new married status.
Have you decided to go the minimoon route because of budget reasons?
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18 Responses to “Minimooning It”
Yes! Our dream honeymoon is a Mediterranean cruise to Italy & Greece, but we can’t make that happen right after the wedding, so we’re going to Napa for a minimoon to decompress.
We figure we’ll hone our wine drinking skills, and about 7 months after the wedding we’re taking the cruise.
oh yeah….we’ll be mini-mooning it up on the Carolina coast which is about 2-3 hours away from our wedding city.
there was no way we could fix our mouths to go off and away for our honeymoon. or even have anything more than a few days. since our wedding is off season for most beaches, we’ll be able to stretch our stay to 4, maybe even 5 days. We plan to relax and eat and enjoy the first few days of marriage alone without the hustle and bustle of our everyday lives.
We are sort of mini mooning.
We are taking a mini moon about a month after the wedding (and after the moving of 2 apartments into 1) to go to Disney for a few days to just have some fun (we live in Florida so that isn’t a big trip) and then our real honeymoon is a trip to see FI’s home state of WI and then a trip to NJ for our friends wedding. We wanted to go on an Alaskan cruise for the honeymoon but time, money and school all being issues we’re going to try for that come our 1 year annivarsary.
If you go on a minimoon, how about Mt Tremblant? I’m not sure if you’ve been there since it’s really close to Montreal but I loveeeeeeeeeee Chateau Beauvallon.
I sometimes wish we would have. We considered it, but then FILs offered us a free week of their timeshare, so we’re going to St. Thomas, which helped a ton with the expenses, but with flights, etc. it still stretches the budget more than I’d like.
Yep, we were going to try to squeeze a smaller trip to the Bahamas in, but with our honeymoon time being in the prime hurricane season, we figured it was best not to go into debt for something that might end tragically. 
We decided on going to Chicago since neither of us has really been there and it’s only about six hours away. We also took the kids on a family vacation last weekend because we felt bad that we were going without them in September. 
Yes, unfortunately my dreams of a honeymoon in Bora Bora will have to wait…we will be mini-mooning in Mexico in November to hold us over until our bank accounts can handle the crazy airfare! =) But you better believe I am milking this whole “honeymoon phase”, since many places you go to, if you code it as a honeymoon you get nice freebies! So armed with a marriage certificate, every vacation we take for the next year will be classified as a “honeymoon”. =P
i had dreams of going to either london or paris at the beginning, but time and circumstance have pushed that trip back at least another year or two (it’s still a goal of ours to visit before we have kids). yesterday -4 wks. til the wedding - we finally decided on a road trip down the california coast. neither of us have ever been to CA before and can’t wait! It’s within our budget, we don’t need passports, and it will still be something exciting to look forward to after the wedding!
We just spent last weekend in D.C. for a minimoon after our May 31st wedding. We moved to Richmond, VA in January and my husband doesn’t have paid time off from his job so a long vacation/honeymoon is going to be on hold for awhile. Plus our budget won’t allow for a large trip w/o putting us into unneeded debt.
D.C. was a short trip from Richmond and offered great hotels and restaurants. After being back at work 2 days after the wedding the trip was a welcomed break. We hadn’t planned the trip ahead of time but found a great deal online for a fantastic hotel and played everything by ear. We are going to take weekend trips every so often over the summer to celebrate. Looking forward to a summer without wedding related stress…
I think we’re going to minimoon someplace quasi-local like the cape and do a Boston/Cape Cod week. It’s out of state but it doesn’t require flights, which should help with expenses. Another quasi-local option may be Montreal. Once we start budgeting we might keep it even closer to home and disappear into the Adirondacks for a week. We hope to do a trip to Europe for our one year anniversary.
I don’t know if this will seem irresponsible of us, but this is exactly why we booked our honeymoon a while ago….before all the final bills were coming due. After we just finished writing 5 cheques over the weekend my FH said “am I ever glad we’ve already booked and paid for our honeymoon” because I have a feeling that if we hadn’t we’d be in the same situation as many people…
I think it is totally understandable that you are holding off on your dream honeymoon…and I think a mini-moon is a great compromise
We will be flying to Europe every year to visit his family. Right now our mini-moon plans are to stay in Seattle (where we are getting married) for 4 days before he heads back to work. I think I will try and squeeze in a visit to Croatia on our next trip over the Pond.
yup, we are minimooning it too. We thought of going to South Lake Tahoe, CA but with gas @ almost $5 a gallon, its gonna be tight.
We may try Monterey area (and go the aquarium) or do some wine tasting in the Central CA area.
We’re planning on registering for a Disney honeymoon. It’s an online registry, people can buy you increments of some part of your trip, like the hotel, park tickets, dinner, etc. We really don’t need a lot in terms of a traditional registry, as we’re two people in our 30’s that have been living on our own for awhile.
This way I figure we can have a great honeymoon at not a terrible cost to us, otherwise we’d probably just spend a weekend at the beach or something.
Yes — we’re mini-mooning for five days in Hawaii to do the zone-out and recovery beach vacation right after the wedding, and then we’re planning to travel to Spain six or seven months after the wedding. The goal is to save some more money before hitting pricey Europe (and maybe use some wedding presents!) and also hope and pray that the dollar recovers somewhat before we get over there!
Until Weddingbee I had never even heard of a mini-moon, but I’m glad I did because we were in NO position to pay for the honeymoon we really wanted. I think the mini-moon is a wonderful idea because you have to go somewhere (anywhere), to decompress and really enjoy the whole occasion before you throw yourselves back into everyday life.
@Amy H - that’s a really good idea. My parents just came back from Europe, and my sister is still there for the summer and the dollar is so far down the exchange, it’s ridiculous! You will definately want to save up as much $$ as you can to have a good time.
We are also planning a mini-moon fron Denver to Lake Tahoe on the Monday-Thursday following our wedding. We will go on a 2 week trip to South America nearly 6 months later over Christmastime. I think mini-moons are great!
Not only are we going on a mini-moon (two nights in the Hamptons at a B&B) but we also went on a Proon- a three day pre-honeymoon to Paris after attending a friend’s wedding in London. The reason we are not going on a honeymoon right after the wedding is because we have three more destination weddings to attend this year! Taking off that much time is almost out of the question, but we are making it work. Next year we plan on a big trip to either Greece or Egypt!
