14 day Honeymoon in Europe!

Hello All:

 

I always felt that if I had to choose between a expensive wedding or a long honeymoon away with my future husband, the honeymoon would win! So, I am so excited to be honeymooning in Europe. We will be taking a 14 day escorted tour to Spain, France & Italy. I was thinking about honeymooning in Mexico, since we initially wanted to get married in Mexico, but all the logistics involved with having a Mexican wedding were a turn off for us. My FI thought that Mexico is a trip that we could take anytime. And that our honeymoon should be something we definitely remember as special. He also felt that after a couple of days in Mexico we would be sort of board. I would have been fine kicking my feet up and taking it easy, but I am very excited to be going back to Spain. A Gf and I went to Barcelona & Madrid in 2000, while visiting Madrid we toured a site called Valley of the Fallen. It was breathtaking to me. I told her that I could see having my wedding there it was the most scenic place I've ever been to. So, I am excited to take my new husband to there and taking pictures together. Our honeymoon's itinerary is as follows:

 

Enjoy 14 nights in Spain, France and Italy. You're never far from the Mediterranean as you travel to Barcelona, the Cote d'Azur, and the Eternal City of Rome.

 

Highlights:

Madrid

Toledo

Barcelona

Arles

Les Baux

Aix-en-Provence

St. Tropez

Ste. Maxime

Cannes

Nice

Monaco

Pisa

Florence

Rome

 

We will be taking 3 weeks off of work. Our first week will be spent in Vegas preparing for our mansion wedding and then we will fly back to NYC spend a night at home and then fly off to Europe. I don't think I will want to go back to work after being away for so long. I feel so fortunate to be have all the aspects come together that I hoped for for our wedding and honeymoon. My dear FI really wanted it to be as special as it could be for both of us!

 

OMG! You have the same wedding date as we do!!! YAY!!! Congrats! You're honeymoon sounds fabulous!!!

 

We're also doing our honeymoon in Europe too. Only difference is, we're also doing our wedding there too. 7 nights in France (wedding week), 3 nights in London, and 5 nights in Amsterdam!

Not sure if your question was for me or the original poster, but yes, we are flying from JFK to NTE (France) for our wedding. Then we go from NTE to London, then London to Amsterdam, and then Amsterdam back to JFK.

 

For that many legs of the trip, we actually got an awesome deal on airfare. We booked our airfare as early as we possibly could (330 days in advance) and got the entire flight plan for approx. $1370 per person! We now have friends who are looking for roundtrip only from JFK to NTE and back, and they are find the prices to be $1100/person.

 

And, if you're not particular about what hotel you stay in as long as it's a certain star rating, I definitely recommend using the Bid Your Own Price on Priceline. We were able to book all of our 5 star hotel accommodations for approx. $150/night. Some of these rooms went for $300+/night so we thought we got a pretty amazing deal!

 

Where in Europe do you want to go? My mom and sister just booked their airfare and are planning on touring Europe after our wedding. Their airfare from LAX and their European tour which starts in London and ends up in Paris (6 countries plus Venice and Paris) was about $2750/person. That includes flying into NTE for the wedding, then flying from NTE to London, and then the tour (includes meals) which ends in Paris and then flying from Paris back to LAX. That also includes transfers to and from the airports in Europe.

 

I hope I haven't overloaded you with info. Just trying to help!

Wow your honeymoon sounds amazing! We're thinking of a 14 day Mediterranean cruise as our honeymoon so we could see different parts of Europe as well. Enjoy!

That's so exciting! We're doing Italy too!!!

Gracie:

The funny thing is we were going to get married on 4/24/10. We choose that date because it was a play on both our birthday. Him being born on the 4th and me on the 24th. We were also initially supposed to get married in Vegas, but thought it to much work. I am actually glad we decided against it now, given the state dept's warning to tourist traveling to Mexico. After Mexico was out I began looking for other places to get married. Vegas was naturally one of the places I looked at seeing that it is considered the Marriage Capital of the world. And they had all these deals for 09/09/09 weddings. I discussed it with my FI and he thought it would be a cool idea. We liked the fact that we could fly in on one day and get married the same day if we wanted to. It just seem effortless. I checked out your wedding site, you wedding location is absolutely beautiful. You itinerary looks great! Have you found your dress, your BM's dress etc? My FI cousin got engaged 10 days before us and their wedding is 4/18/09. I could not imagine trying to put a wedding together in less than 4 months. And they are having 100+ people. We are having 61 people and it is still taking me 9 months to plan.

Good luck with all your planning and I will be checking in from time to time to see how things are coming along as we get closer.

Dolcegirl:

We are flying into Madrid and leaving from Rome. One of the most appealing reason we booked this particular vacation is because all of our tours are taking care of with the price. Are you a member of Costco they have awesome tour packages, I found ours through them. I never thought of going through priceline. There are so many excellent deals to be found now because the tourism industry is hurting.

very cool.. i lived in southern spain for a while and love it there. i'm headed to barcelona (3rd time there) and marseilles and aix-en-provence (1st time for both places) in may. i'll be sure to post a review.

Wow! Everything sounds amazing. It is funny because my family planned a huge Italy trip for this coming May. This was planned before I got engaged. I wish it was our honeymoon because we have some amazing trips planned. Although, I think we will do a mediterranean cruise a little after our wedding. We are getting married in January so I think we'll do something in May or June of 2010.

We went through a TA who booked us on Air France. It works for us cuz most of our miles are through Delta and Northwest. We haven't really looked at any travel books yet. I usually go to tripadvisor for most of my info. I know people are all over the place with their reviews, but I'm a researcher so I tend to read every review so as long as most of the reviews are good, I'm ok. Every place always has a handful of bad reviews cuz you can't please everyone. And a lot of these reviews always recommend things to do, etc. Also, there are forums on tripadvisor that I've always found really helpful to ask questions and stuff.

Thank you!!! I'm so glad you liked it! When FH saw the pics of the place, he knew that was the place we had to get married at. We were originally going to get married in June 2010 (I suggested that time period cuz I know how gun-shy he was about even proposing since he's heard so many horror stories about marriages that end in divorce). But once we got engaged, he was all gungho about it and thought we had no reason to have an overly long engagement and so we thought 9.9.09 would be an easy date to remember so chose that one.

I bought my dress that first month we got engaged last Sept. and my BM's have picked out their dresses but haven't ordered them yet. They have bought their plane tix though. We have 9 people (including ourselves) booked so far! One of my BM's is pregnant so she has to find a new dress cuz she will be about 6-7 months by the time our wedding happens.

Anyway, your Vegas wedding does sound so stress free!! That must be so nice! We've run into the strangest issues during the planning of this wedding from unexpected guests to guests asking for us to help pay for their wedding gift to us (that's a whole different story you can find in the Vents section under Uninvited guests thread). LOL! Anyway, g'luck with your planning! I love hearing everyone's updates.