Decades ago, the short promotional film “Once Upon A Honeymoon” was produced by Bell Telephone Labs. This film, a design short to market Bell’s then-new designer-colored telephones (formerly telephones had only been made in black), centered around a young couple’s long-delayed honeymoon. A full year of delay had passed between the wedding and the honeymoon and the partners’ departure on their honeymoon was interrupted by a work emergency for the husband. While most of the time you will never have such an interruption, if you wait until the eve of your wedding to start planning your honeymoon, you may just have to wait for that long to reach your hotel check-in!
On the other hand, for some parts of the honeymoon, it’s ok to book closer to the date. Flights in particular tend to be cheaper within six to twelve weeks of your intended departure date, so go ahead and book flights and vehicles later in your planning process. Experts believe that the best time to begin planning your honeymoon is about a year before the actual wedding, because of the number of pieces of the honeymoon that must be planned for the best effect, but the actual booking process will start to happen closer to the actual departure date.
After the service and the reception, the most important subject of wedding preparations may well be the honeymoon. When you start the wedding plans, you might be thinking that your honeymoon planning is gravy compared to the stress of planning the day itself.
In some way it is; the honeymoon is after all a vacation to celebrate the consummation of your wedding plans, a reward for a job well done. You’ve put together the perfect day, and you’ve made sure that the friends and family members you love are going to be there. What else is a possible thing, right? But it turns out that the question of when is the best time to book honeymoon accommodations is one that’s early enough to change things if your needs outside of the honeymoon change.
If you have a honeymoon that is planned for weeks, and a thing goes awry that requires your attention at home sooner than your honeymoon was originally planned to end, getting your reservations in early can make it easier to change or amend your plans to your current situation. Just because your honeymoon is the planned romantic getaway of a lifetime doesn’t mean it can’t be amended to make sure that your current situation doesn’t get away from you. But a last-minute reservation will be much more difficult to amend than one that was made months or weeks in advance.
Consider a Travel Agent
Travel agencies seem like quaint, old-fashioned things in the modern world of websites like Expedia and Tripadvisor. But despite these things, it’s helpful to have a person that you can check in with, especially for a once-in-a-relationship vacation like a honeymoon. With a travel agency, there is a person on the other end of the process who can tackle some of the detailed problems of your travel booking for you.
That person is trained and certified to handle the questions that you might never even think about. They can find the right bookings that will make your dream honeymoon happen on your budget. Your travel agent might never even make you ask when is the best time to book honeymoon accommodations because they will do all of the work for you, including booking every accommodation at the right time to maximize your honeymoon experience.
Buy Jewelry in Advance
Even though the wedding and engagement happen before the honeymoon, your wedding jewelry is an intimate part of the wedding. Custom wedding rings for every budget from silver wedding rings for a few hundred dollars up to confections of custom-worked gold costing in the tens of thousands are an integral part of the wedding experience, and these rings can typically be worn for years or even decades. The wedding rings will be of course exchanged at the altar, but your honeymoon will probably be your first chance to wear them in public.
The womens diamond ring is one of the first things you’ll buy for the wedding. With its characteristic slim band and stone setting, this elegant confection will start in the mid-hundreds of dollars and can easily escalate up into the thousands. The tradition, of course, is that the diamond engagement ring should cost roughly two months of the husbands-to-be’s salary.
Like any other part of the wedding process, jewelry buyers can be hired at any point in the process, to shop through the dizzying array of engagement rings for the happy couple to come down to just a handful of pieces that both partners are interested in going further on. Once this process is done, you can further winnow the selection process until one ring remains at the end, which will go on the bride-to-be’s finger until it’s joined by her wedding ring. In many cases, now the wedding ring and the engagement ring will be two of a set, designed to fit snugly together into effectively a single diamond ring setting that also matches the other partner’s ring.
In the case of “two-gown” weddings, the matched set can go even further, with both partners wearing the same wedding and engagement rings for even more possibilities. The traditional two-month rule is often overlooked in two-gown parties. Many of these traditions are developing as we speak, so feel free to scrap your existing traditions and make your own as the whim and the need suit you. When is the best time to book honeymoon accommodations concerning your jewelry? Anywhere from eight to twelve months ahead of the big day. Jewelry is something that will have to be settled upon before the day of the wedding – sometimes long before.
Get Tested Before You Travel
With COVID-19 still a thing, covid testing will have to happen multiple times during the planning process of your honeymoon because even a single failed test could require some level of adaptation of your honeymoon plans. When your family agrees on when is the best time to book honeymoon accommodations, make sure to remember that COVID testing will need to happen both before leaving and after returning home.
Even if others on the plane are not taking mitigation measures – perhaps especially – it’s important to remember that mask-wearing is one of the most effective ways to keep yourself from getting infected in a confined place. But also remember that airliners use HEPA filters and airflow that comes in from the top of the cabin and exits near your feet to keep air flowing through the airplane throughout your flight and minimize your exposure to COVID-19, RSV, flu, and other infectious agents. Statistically, the air crud is very much a thing of the past in many ways, along with other unpleasant reminders of flying days past like smoking and the scent of deeply embedded tobacco ash in flight upholstery. Today’s airplane accommodations, while much more cramped than in years past, are also much healthier. You will not have to worry nearly as much as even before the pandemic of losing days of your honeymoon to flight-related illnesses.
Speaking of the flight, knowing when is the best time to book honeymoon accommodations, with airfare the best rates are usually found within 6 to 12 weeks of taking your flight.
Book Pampering Treatments Early
When you’re finding out when is the best time to book honeymoon accommodations for your pampering treatments, remember that six weeks out, your accommodations are probably going to have the best freedom to book your treatments. In terms of getting the times and dates that you want, you will want to keep it within that magical window of 6 to 12 weeks, about the same time you’re booking your flights. If you can’t do it within that window, further out – up to about 6 to 8 months – will create the best opportunities for your magical vacation and bring you back home stress-free.
If you want to support a Black owned spa or hotel during your honeymoon, as many hotels and resorts are now in the US. These beautiful resort locations and pampering spas are great options for your business. According to the National Association of Black Hotel Owners, Operators, and Developers, while under 2% of American hotels and resorts are owned by Black Americans, that number is increasing every year, and choosing to stay at a Black-owned property helps local small businesses thrive and prosper, which in turn helps the community continue to grow. Since many honeymoons take place around Valentine’s Day, and Valentine’s Day is in the exact middle of Black History Month, that’s a great opportunity to show some support – but supporting Black-owned businesses should not just be reserved for that month, too. Year-round, these fantastic destinations deliver unforgettable experiences and some of America’s most luxurious and little-known vacation destinations.
When planning a honeymoon, a medispa day and local IPL treatment are often popular options for making sure that you look your best for the wedding day and the honeymoon after. Remember, that entire period is planned around feeling your best and looking fantastic, and the best way to accomplish both of these is to make sure that you have your spa pampering built in both before and during the honeymoon.
Pampering is an integral part of the honeymoon. You’ve spent so much time and so much stress during the build-up to the wedding that pampering both partners will make you both remember why you loved the other so much that you wanted to give your life to them. Be sure and take time for yourself in the run-up to the wedding, creating the best experience for yourselves and your guests, and sending you off to the honeymoon feeling grateful and relieved.
Make Dining Reservations Early
Dining reservations can be made for your honeymoon as early as sixty days out from your vacation – this is well after you should have your flight and transportation booked, but a lot further out than you might think. Of course, there are exceptions – the local bar would laugh at you if you wanted to make reservations – but in general, the sooner within that window, the easier your choice of a restaurant will be. There are exceptions. If you are honeymooning at a Disney resort, you can begin to book your dining reservations as far out as 180 days. But in general, 60 days is a good time for booking restaurants.
Nutrition is still important on your honeymoon! Just because you’re on vacation and probably eating a lot of meals out that you normally would doesn’t mean that you can’t eat right while you’re in your vacation spot. Not only are there healthier restaurant options that don’t skimp on taste out there, but you are also available to book honeymoon accommodations with things like full kitchens and cooking classes. A honeymoon cooking class is a great way to connect over a lifetime skill that you and your partner will always be able to rely on.
Plan Ahead for Transportation
Including the airport limo service that you will use to get you to and from the airport at the beginning and end of your honeymoon, transportation planning will generally happen for you during the same time you’re booking flights. Travel websites offer packaged hotel, flight, and vehicle rental packages, while agencies will handle these details for you. Either way, plan for more luxury than you think you will need – don’t make do on your honeymoon!
When is the best time to book honeymoon accommodations? That all depends on what your accommodations are intended to be. The best honeymoon accommodations get booked as far in advance as you can. The closer to the date, the more you compromise.