Choosing our honeymoon proved to be a very difficult task for us. While Mr. Jet and I do have very similar ideas about how we wanted to spend our honeymoon, the options seemed nearly limitless and trying to narrow me down to anything should be an Olympic sport.
Image via Excellence Resorts
We figured we should choose somewhere in the Caribbean, since it wouldn’t be more than a five to six hour flight to most places from Boston and the weather would be really warm in October. We were a go until we realized that we’re hitting the tail end of hurricane season in most of the Caribbean. Oops.
After spending one hectic night in Paris, as mentioned in my previous entry, Mr. C and were off to a Mediterranean paradise via Air Malta.
Malta is a Mediterranean island just south of Sicily and north of Tunisia and Libya. Because of its unique and convenient location between Europe and Africa, it represents an interesting blend of language, food, culture, and history. The primary language is Maltese (a strange blend of Arabic and Italian), but many people speak English as Malta was a British colony from 1813 to 1964. Malta is also a member of the European Union and, as such, uses the Euro as currency. The country is also devoutly Roman Catholic, and there were many festivals taking place honoring local patron saints. Although strangely its Muslim and Arabic past still lingers in the language and place names throughout the islands. Practically all the buildings are constructed of the tan stone that is mined on the islands. In fact, it is a law that buildings are constructed of this material, probably for both aesthetic and environmental reasons as there are few trees on the island. It gives the place a very beautiful and unique appearance.
It’s time for the Camel honeymoon recaps! In case you missed it, we visited the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo with a short stop in the city of Paris on our way home. I will include a mixture of pretentious Instagram photos and “real” photos from my DSLR. Sorry if you get photo overload, but I took a lot on this trip!
The night of our wedding, Mr. C and I stayed at a place in downtown Athens called Hotel Indigo. It’s only about 15 to 20 minutes from our venue and we had a limo ride there. One our our coworker’s wives upgraded our original reservation to the presidential suite. It had three rooms, a bathroom the size of our apartment bedroom, a baby grand piano, a living room with a giant flat screen TV, a second entryway bathroom—in short, it was enormous and absolutely ridiculous as we’d only really be spending a few hours there. I actually woke up around 4:00 am, my head abuzz with wedding day emotions, and was only able to fall back asleep as dawn crept into the windows. Around 10:00 am we checked out of our decadent room and met up with my dad, step-family, grandma, aunts and uncles for breakfast at their hotel down the street. We also ran into Mr. C’s dad and stepmother who were also staying at the hotel.
In hindsight, I’ve shared very little regarding our honeymoon. I think that’s partially because it always seemed like this far-off thing, like the very, very dim light at the end of a very, very long tunnel. There was always something more, something bigger and more immediate in between us and our honeymoon, so after it was booked, it was pushed to the back burner.
When Mr. Palm Tree and I awakened in our hotel room the morning after our wedding, I squealed. “Baby, how excited are you for our HONEYMOON?!” We shared in some celebratory squeeage. Like I mentioned in my previous post, I think we made a really, really sound decision by taking our honeymoon so soon after our wedding for a couple of reasons:
), but we missed each other. Even though we made some really great and seemingly longtime friends on our trip, we were able to do whatever WE wanted without needing to be considerate of what other people wanted to do. Super awesome.
Mr. Lemur and I rented a house for our honeymoon. From the beginning, we were looking for a house—we never really considered one of the many hotels and resorts in the area. There are obviously benefits on both sides. Personally, we loved the privacy and uniqueness of renting a house, but then again we missed out on the extra luxuries of being on a resort. So here we go with renting a house versus booking a resort…
Renting a House
1. The biggest advantage to us was privacy. We had the whole house to ourselves—two floors and three decks! There was no bumping into other visitors in the hallways or fighting for parking.
Personal photo
2. The house we stayed in was incredibly unique. The floors, walls, and ceilings were covered in reclaimed wood from an old Charleston house. The man who built the house did it as a hobby—he was more of a hobbyist than a craftsman, so the uniqueness came through. None of the windows were the same size and the stair treads were slightly uneven, for example. Personally I felt like it added to the character of the house!
Did anyone else wake up six months out from your wedding and realize, “Crud, I have no idea where to go on a honeymoon.” But you were completely overwhelmed with wedding planning that the thought of planning the logistics of a vacation made you queasy?
Yep, that’s us.
As much as we love to travel, we knew we wanted our honeymoon to be ridiculously easy and brainless to plan. Hello Mr. Cruise. We spent about an hour looking at a few different cruise lines, destinations, and lengths. We paid our deposit and didn’t think about it again until the morning after our wedding.
Literally, Mr. S was a the lobby of the hotel printing out our boarding tickets about 11:45 AM the day of our cruise…
We had no idea what we were doing. We pulled up and saw this beauty:
We knew from the beginning we wanted to take a honeymoon, especially to spend some time together after extended long distance, but didn’t really have the budget or the time to do anything super fancy. Instead, we spent the week in one of our favorite cities, Charleston—the city where Miss Camera is getting married! Charleston also happens to be beautiful and insanely romantic.
We rented a little house on Folly Beach, twenty minutes from downtown, and less than four hours from our wedding venue. Since it was a morning wedding, we headed out mid-afternoon in our little car for our week long stay at the beach.
Personal photo
Spoiler for the wedding day recaps:
For some reason, when I hear word mini-moon, I always picture a person with a tiny butt mooning someone. Or just a slight flash of the butt. You know, “I didn’t want to full-on moon them, so I just gave a little mini-moon.” (Full disclosure: I’ve never mooned anyone. I’ll never be that brave.)
But back to the point. Mr. Whale and I are still going to have our honeymoon in the Canadian Rockies. But that’s not for a few weeks! So when I saw a Living Social deal for two nights at Archers Mountain Inn in North Carolina, I snatched it up. Best. Decision. Ever.
Day 1: We Drive
The drive from Blairsville, GA to Banner Elk, NC was incredible.
We stopped for photos so many times. I managed to convince Mr. Whale to let me have him in one photo. Isn’t he cute?? (That’s my husband, now!)
I don’t know about you all, but when it’s raining and dreary I start dreaming of vacations. Those of you who have ever been to Seattle (or know of the reputation) may recognize that rain is a common occurrence, but I’m here to tell you that there is a difference between gray and wet and raining.
We get a lot of this. (Image via Foundation Magazine)
About a year and a bit out from the wedding many of the big to-dos had been taken care of (venue, catering, lodging, DoC, and my dress), my DIYs were coming along, but a lot of the fiddly details couldn’t really be started on yet. So I started dreaming about the honeymoon.
Yup, I’m totally obsessed about where we’re going and what we’ll be doing on the day after the wedding, and the day after that, and the day after that…you get the idea.
And the worst part of it? It’s not even my decision.
We decided from the beginning that Mr. Road Trip would be in charge of the honeymoon—budget, decisions, etc.—and I would happily take a back seat. That lasted about a year, apparently, when suddenly a switch flipped in my brain and I started stalking cruise schedules.
Because that’s what we figured we’d be doing: floating in the middle of the ocean, somewhere, with nothing to do and nowhere to go that we didn’t want to. We’ve done one cruise together, just before we started cohabitating, and to say it was bliss would be an understatement. So a cruise seemed the logical, wonderful choice.
We made our first reservation for our honeymoon. No, it wasn’t our plane tickets or a hotel. It was, as I’m sure you could tell from the title, a restaurant reservation.
Sparky and I both love food. One of our favorite things to do is explore a new restaurant. So, since we had sketched some broad strokes for ideas for the honeymoon, we knew pretty much where we’d be.
One of our honeymoon destinations happens to be San Sebastian, Spain. In San Sebastian there are many wonderful restaurants. One of those restaurants happens to be world renowned. That restaurant is Arzak.
The front of Arzak via Panathinaeos
I happened to read that dinner reservations were rather tricky to obtain, so I suggested we get in touch early about a dinner reservation. We did and we got it.
I strongly believe that life shouldn’t go “back to normal” immediately following a wedding. I couldn’t imagine spending a year of my life planning one day, only to go back home after the reception and return to work on Monday.
Of course, this all comes down to budget. And time off work, but I just want to focus on the budget element of this right now.
We’re incredibly fortunate to be able to go away for three weeks the day after we get married, but before the option of Disney became available, we threw around some lower-budget ideas. Although I have to admit, I found it near impossible to find something “honeymoon-worthy” for around £500.
A couple of weeks ago, a colleague of mine was taken on a surprise birthday trip by his girlfriend. When he returned he sent me a link to the place he stayed, and Oh.My.God why hadn’t I known about this site before?!
If you live in the UK and want a mini getaway for less than £500 (or even less in some cases) then I want to let you in on this little secret…
Canopy & Stars is a site that lists rural retreats across the UK, Spain, France, and Portugal. Some of these cabins are to die for.
My colleague stayed at The Wriggly Tin in Hampshire.
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Image via Canopy & Stars
There are two of these little huts in a secluded meadow—one at each end. With a shabby-chic interior, this hut also has a wood-burning stove, hurricane lamps, and candles. No electric here—you are completely cut off from the world in your own little romantic bubble.
It’s weird…before the ‘Bee I never even realised that people had such strong opinions about registries.
Apparently a registry should be spread via word of mouth, and it should be for only household gifts. You should never expect a gift, and you should be thankful for that plastic flower that your great aunt gave you that says “do not display in direct sunlight” on the label, even though you’d never display it anywhere where light could get to it because it’s so hideous. (That didn’t happen to me…OK, it did.)
We’re not doing a household registry. We’re doing a honeymoon registry. We will be putting the registry details on our website and app, and we can pretty much guarantee that everyone will be thankful that we did.
You see, registries just aren’t a big deal. Not with my circle, anyway. We’ve had household registries, honeymoon registries, and even little poems about how it’d be nice to get cash. And it never offended me. Not one bit.
I see a lot of posts on the boards by people asking for advice when trying to plan a Disney World holiday, so I thought I’d write up a little post about the things I’ve picked up whilst planning mine.
When I first set off planning mine, I knew only two things.
The rest, I learnt from research. Insane research. The kind of research that led me to watch YouTube videos and find out the price of meals. I went into a lot of detail.
I’ll break down planning into a few categories.
But to start, let’s look at the best time of year to visit.
So I’m off to America for my honeymoon, but what about those of you who’d like to visit England for your post-wedding getaway?
I’m going to cheat a little bit and not talk about my actual hometown. I grew up in the northwest of England in a town called Bolton, which isn’t really somewhere that I would recommend tourists visit. It sort of looks a bit like this.
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Screenshot of the very popular soap Coronation Street
It ain’t that pretty.
But I did spend most of my childhood in The Lake District. We had a static caravan on a park on Lake Windermere and I had the best time. We’d go water skiing and make dens in the trees by the parks.
We visited every weekend during the spring and summer for 10 whole years, so naturally I think I can call this place my “home away from home.”
Our caravan was on Fallbarrow Park. Rules meant caravans had to be replaced once they were 10 years old in order to stop the place from “aging,” and the result was a beautiful place where everything was kept well maintained.
