Weddingbee Blog

With six months to go until the wedding, it was time to start planning our honeymoon! We had already decided we wanted to go to Greece. The Dude’s never been to Europe before, so he was game for almost anything. I liked the idea of having at least a couple days to relax on the beach, and he couldn’t wait to see some ancient ruins. Island hopping in Greece seemed like the best of both worlds. Sure, plane tickets would be expensive, but the Dude’s been diligently saving ever since we got engaged.

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Imagine our surprise when my mom generously offered us her airline miles on British Airways!

We jumped at the offer, but soon our plans began to morph—instead of flying directly into Athens, we’d take a flight into London, then hop on the Chunnel to Paris, and stay a few nights in that magical city before training it all the way into Greece.

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The Dude was pumped about Paris, and even though I’ve been there once before, I started to get excited about seeing the City of Lights with my guy. I went ahead and booked two one-way tickets: one from Dallas (yep, we’ll have to drive from Austin to Dallas the day after our wedding) to London and another from Athens to Dallas. We had to spend more points this way, but luckily my mom had plenty of points to share with us. If you decide to use your accumulated air miles to book your honeymoon, I would suggest booking as early as possible. We got lucky and didn’t encounter too many blackouts, but we did have to play around with our dates a bit.

With our flight booked, we were planning on relaxing on the honeymoon plans for awhile, but then we heard that Orbitz was having a crazy sale on hotels. We had to check it out. We logged onto Orbitz and plugged in the dates that we would be in Paris. (Note: if you’re booking an international honeymoon, make sure you check your flight itinerary before booking a hotel. We almost booked our Paris hotel for the wrong nights due to a mix-up on what day it would be when we arrived in London!) We scrolled through the list, looking for hotels that met our criteria: at least 3 to 4 stars, not an international chain, close to the city center, modern and romantic decor. For each hotel we looked at on Orbitz, we made sure to check the hotel’s website as well to see if the Orbitz price was actually better. In most cases, the Orbitz price won out—but it’s always a good idea to make sure, since sometimes hotels will offer specials if you book directly through them.

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We ended up lucking out: we booked the Hotel Ares Eiffel, a four-star modern boutique hotel that’s a ten-minute walk from the Eiffel Tower! We devoured the virtual tours on their website: beautiful rooms and suites decorated in extravagant-yet-simple modern style, funky lounge area, sparkling pictures of the city at night. Uh, sold! Best of all: the price. For around $900 U.S., we got a double for three nights. It’s definitely a splurge for us, but this’ll be the first place we stay on our honeymoon. We plan on going a bit cheaper while we’re in Greece.

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This is the building that will be greeting us upon our arrival in Paris—I can’t wait! Here’s some more eye candy from this whimsical yet modern hotel. I can’t help but think it fits the mood of the city perfectly.

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What was your biggest honeymoon splurge?