Why the Credit Crunch Shouldn’t Mean Forgoing Your Honeymoon By Claire Bryant At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

With the average wedding costing over £17,000 putting off the luxury honeymoon may seem a viable option. However, a honeymoon is a once in a lifetime experience and certainly should not be budgeted over in favour of the more expensive ‘roast beef’ wedding breakfast for two hundred. So, if you want to cut back your costs but don’t want to have to wait another six months to jet off into the sunset, then take these top tips on board.

Book in Advance

Last-minute and honeymoon are two words that just don’t mix. If you want to save money on your luxury honeymoon then the exact opposite is true: book in advance and you’ll save money. Airlines use a fare-based system which rises due to consumer demand, the further in advance you book the less consumer demand there is for those dates, meaning your air-fare works out cheaper. If you’re an Airmiles customer then it’s also worth looking at the advance deals that your Airmiles card offers, as this is a great way to save money or receive points based benefits, such as free upgrades.

Get Your Guests to Pay

You may have always dreamt of a big wedding, however that doesn’t necessarily mean that you see the justice of forking out £150 for Great Aunt Maud’s Beef Wellington, despite not having seen, or received a Christmas card from her since you were about 9 years old. It’s only fair to expect something more substantial than salt and pepper shakers from her, and with most couples living together for a minimum of 2 years before saying the big ‘I Do’, its also conceivable that you’ll already have all the condiments and crockery that you need to set up home.

However, many travel companies have provided a solution to this trend and now offer gift-vouchers that can be used as part payment towards your luxury honeymoon. But, whilst these are a great idea, they often count on your guests being really organised and buying the vouchers way in advance of the date of your wedding, and whilst you can dream, chances are the majority of guests will have trouble making the church on time, let alone buying your gift months in advance. This gives way to the horrible situation of having to take your honeymoon a few months after the wedding date.

A service offered by key2holidays and other brands of the Western & Oriental collection, Honeymoon with Honeymiles, provides the perfect solution and gives guests the chance to purchase excursions and experiences that can be added on to your honeymoon. So, if you and your beloved have chosen to take a luxury honeymoon in South Africa, then your wedding guests can log onto a personal website and choose from a selection of excursions, such as a treehouse sleepout on safari, or if they really don’t like your new groom, a Great White Shark cage dive near Hermanus.

Tailor-Made Honeymoons

You and your new groom may be a match made in heaven, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you like exactly the same things or want to spend your honeymoon doing the same activities.

You may have spent ages poring over the Burj El Arab in luxury honeymoon brochures and envisioned days spent lazing on the beach with a trashy novel and your better half rubbing suntan lotion into your back, whereas, on the other hand, your fiancé’s been dreaming of romantic quad bike tours side by side in the Arabian desert. So for the sake of marital bliss, what do you do? Well other than splurging your honeymoon holiday budget on two completely contrasting holidays you could tailor-make a dream package to suit the both of you, saving you both money as well as from honeymoon hell. And with most wedding ceremonies more about the lavish show of expense than you and your partner’s lifelong commitment to each other, should you and your bride or groom want to arrange a private commitment ceremony or blessing, you can add this on to your tailor-made honeymoon.

Get Married Abroad

The best way to save money on your wedding without forgoing any of the luxury on your honeymoon is to combine the two. Getting married abroad saves you money as relatives that you’ve not seen for ages won’t travel to the Maldives for the sake of a free bar and a cordon bleu meal, meaning that you can really splurge out on the guests that are willing to put up with a 10 hour flight in cattle class in order to see you and your groom achieve your happy ever after. However, you don’t necessarily need to take your luxury honeymoon in the same destination that you’re arranging your upcoming nuptials in. For example, if you plan to tie the knot in Sri Lanka, arrange your honeymoon in the nearby Maldives. The flights will be cheaper between the two destinations owing to their close proximity and the flight time will be substantially less than from the UK, meaning that you have more time to spend enjoying your luxury honeymoon.

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