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Honeymoon Discussions
Relaxing HM or "best vacation ever?"
I am hoping I can get insight from you girls (and guys)- especially from those who have been married and on HMs themselves.
My FI wants to plan the best vacation we will ever have. He wants 2 weeks in Hawaii and he wants to see and do so much. I want a nice beach vacation at an all-inclusive in Mexico (1 week).
It's not that I wouldn't love an expensive 2 week trip in Hawaii (who wouldn't)- but we are paying for the wedding ourselves and I think having a vacation where you don't have to pay for every drink/dinner would be a nice change of pace. I think we(I) will be too exhausted after the wedding to want to do too much touring/hiking. I am also new to my job and won't have any paid vacation (missing 2 weeks pay is a lot of $!)
I pointed out that we will be able to do a ski trip in the winter and Hawaii for a one year anniversary. (3 vacations in one year before we have kids seems awesome to me!) But he still thinks the HM is suppose to be the best vacation we will ever take.
We are usually good about compromising and seeing things from each other's perspective. But when it comes to the HM- we have such different ideas of what we want - I hate fighting with him about this. Please help!
So am I too practical? Should I be more romantic about this? Or is he being too romantic and needs a dose of reality? Or is it a mixture?
My FI wants to plan the best vacation we will ever have. He wants 2 weeks in Hawaii and he wants to see and do so much. I want a nice beach vacation at an all-inclusive in Mexico (1 week).
It's not that I wouldn't love an expensive 2 week trip in Hawaii (who wouldn't)- but we are paying for the wedding ourselves and I think having a vacation where you don't have to pay for every drink/dinner would be a nice change of pace. I think we(I) will be too exhausted after the wedding to want to do too much touring/hiking. I am also new to my job and won't have any paid vacation (missing 2 weeks pay is a lot of $!)
I pointed out that we will be able to do a ski trip in the winter and Hawaii for a one year anniversary. (3 vacations in one year before we have kids seems awesome to me!) But he still thinks the HM is suppose to be the best vacation we will ever take.
We are usually good about compromising and seeing things from each other's perspective. But when it comes to the HM- we have such different ideas of what we want - I hate fighting with him about this. Please help!
So am I too practical? Should I be more romantic about this? Or is he being too romantic and needs a dose of reality? Or is it a mixture?
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Relaxing HM or "best vacation ever?"
I do think the honeymoon is a great "excuse" to do something far-flung and exotic and maybe different than just another trip you would take at any time, so in that way I sort of side with your FI, but that doesn't mean you need to kill yourselves with activities and plans
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The down sides of doing one week in Hawaii (the one thing we can agree on): it is a long way to fly for just 1 week and there is so much to see and do that it is better to do it in 2 weeks.
We probably won't go back to Hawaii for several years- so if we do a trip there- we want to to it right. His solution is to do it "right" for the HM- mine is to put it off for a year.
Also- he really doesn't think we will be running around that much the week before the wedding (although I know we will) so he doesn't consider that too much. And my objection to Hawaii is that we couldn't afford an all-inclusive. I don't want to think about how I am drinking an $7 cocktail - I just want to enjoy it. I add up costs in my head and the worst time to do an expensive vacation like this is immediately after we pay for a wedding.
Hope that helps clarify why this issue has become so polarizing for us.
my fiance really likes to travel and do stuff on vacation and not just sit on the beach. i am like you and would be in heaven spending 8 days lying by the ocean. to compromise, we got an AI in Mexico for 8 days and we decided to do one day of relaxing on the beach, one day doing an adventure (mayan ruins, zip line, scubadiving, xcarat ecopark, etc), on day beach, one day adventure, and so on until the end of the trip. that way we both get what we want, we aren't spending tons of money, and we both leave happy. hope that helps!
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Would you guys be willing to do a relaxing "mini-moon" for a couple of days directly following the wedding, then taking the two-week Hawaii trip like five months later? Or is this what you mean when you say you want to go to Mexico and then push back the Hawaii trip?
Also, FWIW, I'm pretty sure there really aren't very many, if any, all-inclusive resorts in Hawaii.
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Just posted on another board and thought.. where did my ticker go.
Yes I am the pharmacybride.. not trying to hide.. just had to create a new name that didn't reveal my email when I posted. Signed on incorrectly at work..oops.
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Well I may be biased, but here is my $.02.
An AI in Mexico is nothing special to me compared to Hawaii. Maybe because I live in Texas, Mexico is just meh to me. Also it's relatively cheap in comparision to the other trips you are talking about--you can go there anytime.
Hawaii is definitely a once in a lifetime vacation, which is how we treated our HM. We left the Monday after the wedding and stayed 9 days. It was, IMO, the perfect HM. We were perfectly ready to leave that Monday, even after a busy wedding weekend which for me started on Thursday with my B-party and ended Sunday with brunch. Sunday we were exhausted, yes, but by Monday we were fine.
Hawaii is expensive, there is no doubt about it. There are no AI's in Hawaii--and it's more like $12 a cocktail. But we went in knowing this and said we weren't going to worry about it. But then again, we were treating it as a trip of a lifetime.
My suggestion would be to compromise and do a 8-10 day HM on 1 Hawaiian island. I promise you, you will not regret it! This is assuming you can put the budget worries aside, but only you can answer that.
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Aside of that=I say write up a budget for both-AI in Mex and non AI in Hawaii. Find one and then look at google and see which restaurants are aound, how much excursions are et...add them up and see if you can afford it. I can't make a determination (and don't think you or he can either) without doing that and then seeing how much you have left to pay for your wedding.
[QUOTE]Thanks everyone for your help!! I showed him the thread we he got home from work and he kept saying things like "I am not going to Mexico for my honeymoon " "We are not going for less than 2 weeks- it's our honeymoon " "We can put this on our credit card" YIKES! He is normally not this foolish about money but he has been ridiculous about this topic. Thanks for your advice- but I'm not really sure how to move forward from here.. ::sigh::
Posted by PharmacyBride[/QUOTE]
Yikes, it sounds like your FI is having a bridezilla moment! You don't want to go into debt over your honeymoon. Before you guys start talking about destinations, the first thing you need to do is determine a budget that you can truly afford. Discussion about activities and resorts and plane tickets has to follow from here.
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Is there any other destination that might be a better fit for what both of you want? Going into credit card debt over any vacation, even your HM, just isn't smart.
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I relate by the way. Hawaii is close to me so it's our "easier" choice. I'm trying to convince my FI that flying to a Pacific island with 50 inhabitants where you have to live in one of their houses is a bad idea.