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It’s becoming more and more popular to not take a honeymoon right away. It’s getting more normal for people to plan to wait until their one year anniversary to go on a honeymoon. From a financial perspective I get it. You just spent a ton of money on a wedding and now you’re going to pay for an expensive honeymoon vacation on top of it? It can be much easier to say that we will save for a year and take our honeymoon to celebrate our one year anniversary instead. DO NOT DO IT. As a newlywed, I can tell you that you absolutely should not delay your honeymoon.
Top reasons to not delay your honeymoon
Even if somehow the wedding planning process has only been minimally stressful for you, you should still take time to breathe and spend some quality time with your new husband or wife. When you do not delay your honeymoon, you have the chance to relax and spend some quality one on one time together before you have to jump right back in to everyday life.
Likely the wedding planning process or even the day of the wedding itself was at least mildly stressful and you could use some time to relax and decompress. Most likely, wedding planning has either been very stressful for you or very stressful watching your now spouse be extremely stressed.
If you go back to work and get back into your same routine, you don’t give yourself time to process the fact that now you’re married! Maybe for you, your new married status doesn’t really mean that anything has changed from a day to day standpoint, but even if that is true, you should give yourself at least a few days to let it soak in. Practice calling yourself and your spouse by your new titles of husband or wife and smile.
Recognize this as an opportunity. This will probably be the largest consecutive vacation that your work will allow you to take until parental leave. It tends to be an allowable longer vacation since you don’t get married every day. Use this opportunity to travel and spend one on one time with your spouse.
You might think that a one year anniversary honeymoon will be just as good. Just be careful. A year from now you can always take an anniversary trip. If you wait to do your honeymoon, life might get in the way and you might not have the chance to take a trip with just you and your spouse. When you do not delay your honeymoon, you can be assured you’ll have at least one romantic getaway together.
Your honeymoon will be great one on one time for you and your spouse. You might get to try something new together. You can encourage each other and have fun without the daily stress of life. You also can sit together and look online as friends post your wedding pictures on social media and relive the wedding or find out about funny things that happened that you didn’t even know about.
What to do if money was the reason you wanted to delay your honeymoon:
Consider honeymoon length. Maybe you take a long weekend honeymoon instead of a full week or longer. This might not be ideal, but in order to have a honeymoon and not add financial stress to your new marriage this could be extremely important.
Open your mind to other locations. There’s no escaping it, some locations are simply more expensive than others. Consider different options and do some research to find out what activities are available in each location so that you can make the most of your trip even if it’s to somewhere local. Read the budget vacation tips post for more tips.
Have a staycation. Stay home, talk about what you loved most about the wedding, spend time together and enjoy your new wedding gifts. We got such great gifts like an ice cream maker, an automatic wine opener and airtight sealer, and a KitchenAid mixer and we’re always looking for more time to get to use them.
Instead of creating a gift registry use Honeyfund to register for activities for your honeymoon instead of or in addition to a traditional gift registries like the one at Amazon.
Remember that your honeymoon doesn’t need to look like anything in particular. Customize it to something that you and your spouse will love instead of planning a trip based on what you think a honeymoon should be. Just like your wedding should have reflected you and your spouse’s style, your honeymoon should too.
The bottom line is that hopefully this will be your last wedding. You don’t want to let that opportunity pass and miss your chance to have a honeymoon. A honeymoon is so much more about time spent together than it is about a huge expensive vacation. Take time to celebrate your new marriage. You can always go on more vacations in the future. Your honeymoon does not need to be expensive or long, but you should definitely not delay your honeymoon.
Top 3 Additional Wedding Resources
1. Looking for a resource to help with the wedding planning process? I created this 13 page printable to help you stay organized and make sure that you capture all of the information you need. It even contains a sample wedding day timeline. This Wedding Planner Packet will make your wedding preparations simple and will help you plan the wedding of your dreams without forgetting a thing. Make your wedding planning process simple.
2. Read more about how to create a budgeting partnership with your new spouse.
3. Are you a newlywed or soon-to-be newlywed who is looking to start your finances off right? This is a must have resource for newlyweds or anyone looking to combine finances. It takes the budgeting basics and makes it so each partner completes their own independent budget and then the couple gets back together to create their joint budget. Painlessly combine finances.