Weddingbee Blog

Catch up on the entire After “I Do” series here! And if you have a burning question you’d like to see discussed, submit it here!

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Honeymoon aside, have you gone on any great vacations or getaways with your spouse since you got married? Where did you go? Any tips for getaways on a budget?

We’ve been to Richmond, VA, Bali (our very belated honeymoon), Phoenix and the Grand Canyon, New Orleans and Turkey since getting married. Travel is something that’s really important to me (my post WB blog is a travel related one), and Mr. Swan and I decided that it would be something we prioritize at the beginning of our marriage. We’re in the space where we can go places together (and in some cases separately), so we do make trips when we can. Soon we’re hoping to go to some more places closer to home that we have not been able to visit.

As for trimming the travel budget, I really think it depends on what you want to prioritize. I’m at the point in my life where I like nicer accommodations, but I love eating in places where the locals do and that often reduces how much I spend on meals. We have found that traveling in the “off season” for many destinations can actually be a great way to save money on everything from airfare to accommodations, entrance fees, etc. If you can endure a little extra rain or cooler temperatures, you’ll deal with smaller crowds, have a little more money in your pocket and may have a better experience.

Mr. Socks and I take a portion of our income every week and set it aside for vacations. One mini vacation we’ve already gone on as a married couple was to the Cardigans’ wedding in Texas! We also plan on a trip to Maine over the Easter holidays, we might take a trip over the 4th of July, and another vacation overseas in the fall.

Mr. Socks and I desperately want to travel as much as humanly possible before we have children, so setting aside a portion of our income for vacationing is very helpful. It makes the financial burden much less cumbersome when we know we’re chipping away at a vacation goal, rather than expecting to come up with the money a few months before we leave.

My best advice for vacationing on a budget is to really explore the areas close to you—mini getaways are sometimes just as fun as more expensive trips because it’s really mostly about spending time together.

We’ve spent several weekends away since we got married, mostly to the many wine regions or camping/hiking spots in California. But New Orleans in April is our first vacation-vacation since the wedding. We set aside chunks of vacation time and money for a large international trip a year and for a smaller domestic one in the spring. Traveling is at the top of our priority list, so getaway weekends and vacations come at the expense of things like homeownership and children.

Wherever you live, I think budget weekends—via a Southwest flight or the nearby open road—is one of the best ways to recharge together. We often skimp more on accommodations (how much time are we spending in the hotel room, anyway?), so that’s my favorite tip for cutting costs.

No. We’re awful with that kind of frivolity and spontaneity!! Well, that’s not totally true: we did go to Jamaica 9 months after we were married. However, we did call it our ’honeymoon’, so I suppose it doesn’t count here. Honestly, I think we would travel a lot more, but we’re both in grad school. Classes 5 days a week don’t really allow for travel, and the holidays and breaks are my busiest times at work. We also have pretty crazy savings and debt-payoff goals, and those definitely interfere with the spending of money on travel. (And because of where we live, plane tickets are very, very expensive to almost anywhere and air travel takes all day + several connections.) So we’re definitely homebodies. Would we like to travel more? Yes. Making it happen…that’s another story.

We haven’t been on any super blowout trips since we got married, but we’ve taken a lot of shorter or more local ones. We’ve done more than a few long weekends in California wine countries—we’ve been to Santa Ynez and Paso Robles twice each since we got married just over a year ago. (You may recall that our honeymoon started out in Sonoma. What can I say? The Spaniels like wine.)

Amazingly for most people in our age range, travel is *not* one of our top priorities—at least, not anymore. We both did some major traveling before we got married (and NOT WITH EACH OTHER! Ladies, if you have never traveled without an SO, I highly, HIGHLY recommend it) and while I still want to see much, much more of the world, I’ve realized that it’s more important to me right now to get out of debt (law school is expensive, yo) and buy a house. I also am not afraid of traveling after children. If you want it badly enough, you’ll do it! His parents did (both with and without the kiddos), and my parents did once (and I’m sure they would have done it more if they actually liked traveling with each other ;).

Still, it gets old to see the same four walls around you every day, at times, so we still try to get out to new places once in awhile. To get our exploring on without breaking the bank, we go camping (I tell myself it’s *romantic* to get dirt everywhere, instead of just cheap), use Travelzoo vouchers for hotels, and stick with locations that we can reach in just a few hours by car.

I honestly don’t know how we’ll have money/time for vacations now that we’re married. Mr. G is from England and we plan on going there every other year. We also really miss Japan and want to go back there occasionally. Any small weekends off go to visiting my parents in L.A. It is tough being an international couple because all our cash and vacation time goes SFO - HEATHROW - LAX - TKO.

Like the Socks we put away money every month specifically for travel. We both traveled a fair amount before getting married and have made it a priority going forward. We’re having the baby talk next summer, so we want to see as much as we can before we start making family plans.

Since the wedding in August 2009, we’ve vacationed in Palm Springs, Portland, Napa, Albuquerque (to see family) Northern Italy with a side trip to Croatia, Santa Barbara and just recently in Guatemala. We have plans for Vancouver/Whistler and maybe Maine this summer.

I travel quite a bit for work and we’re lucky because I get to keep all the miles from the flights. A couple trips to Africa and Europe every year really adds up.

I have 3 tips for travel:

1. An airline credit card. I know it’s hard to use miles with some airlines but we haven’t had any problems. We have an Alaska Airlines card because Seattle is a hub and they partner with a bunch of random airlines. It costs $75 a year but it worth it to us because we get a $99 companion fare ticket every year and as long as the flight we use it on is worth more than $174, we always save money. We are really good with our cards and never carry a balance. We also charge everything we can to the credit card to get miles.
2. Priceline’s name your own price. We’ve stayed in $500 hotels for $100. I’ve never had a bad experience with any of the hotel’s we’ve book with them (knock on wood).
3. Signing up for fare alerts. In January I was looking for a ticket to London in May. The tickets were pricing at $1050 which was way more than I wanted to spend. I decided to sign up for one of those fare alert email things and a couple weeks later, I got a note saying flights to London from Seattle were $575. I booked the ticket and two days later the special price was no longer available.

We haven’t really traveled since the wedding (we took a 6-day trip to Miami in March but that doesn’t really count because it’s where my in-laws live) BUT…I just booked our tickets for an almost-three-week adventure to EUROPE!!! We’re going to Italy for a friend’s wedding and spending a week there, then heading to Norway to visit more friends for a week and then to London, where we will again visit friends. I. CAN’T. WAIT!

Mr TM has never been to Europe and I have a sweet summer vacation schedule (holla for being a teacher) so when we got the invitation to the wedding in Italy, it just seemed like the right time.

However, this will probably be our last big trip before we get serious about a house and babies so who knows when we’ll do something like this again…

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What about you?  Have you gone on any great vacations or getaways with your spouse since you got married?  Any tips for getaways on a budget?