Honeymoon Hunting: Episode I

Now that we've finally booked our honeymoon, I'll share the story of how we ended up choosing our destination and all the many places that we considered spending our first days as newlyweds before we made that decision.

The Backyard Groom and I have created a tradition of taking one big vacation a year and spending the rest of the year saving up for our next journey abroad. In the past, we've always taken this trip in February, since it's the off-season in many places and prices tend to be much, much lower.

When we settled on November for the wedding, we weren't sure what to do about the honeymoon. We liked the tradition of having our big trip in February to look forward to each year, but we didn't want to wait until February to take our honeymoon. At first, we considered spending less on the honeymoon so we would still have enough to take our traditional bigger trip in February. Where could we go cheaply but still have a fabulous time and be spoiled as newlyweds?

(photo courtesy of The Backyard Groom)

Las Vegas, of course! Longtime readers will remember that we also originally considered getting hitched in Vegas before settling on The Backyard. We both thought a Vegas honeymoon would be fun, but at the same time, we usually make a pilgrimage to Sin City each year so we were afraid it would feel like any other trip there. So we nixed that option. Now I'm thrilled about that decision, because two of our friends will be marrying in Vegas in January so we'll get to take a trip there not too long after our own wedding. And we'll get to book the reservations as Mr. and Mrs. The Backyard Groom! Yay!

We started talking more and more about what we wanted out of our honeymoon. (1) We're not really beach people, but we love exploring cities so we wanted to visit somewhere with lots of history, art and food options. (2) We wanted to leave the U.S. (3) We wanted cold weather, which may seem crazy to anyone north of the Mason-Dixon line, but as Texans, we tend to think of cold weather as more romantic than the boiling temps we're accustomed to. (4) When describing what he wanted out of a honeymoon, The Backyard Groom may have used the word "epic." After looking at these considerations, we finally decided that we would just use the money we typically put toward our February trip and use it for our honeymoon.

One of The Backyard Groom's dream destinations is Prague so we started working on building a trip around "the Golden City," pictured below.

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We mapped out a two-week itinerary of Central Europe, flying into Prague, taking the train to Vienna then Salzburg and finally Munich, where would fly out from. We priced airfare, researched romantic B&Bs on TripAdvisor and checked rail schedules. I may or may not have started singing songs from "The Sound of Music" when I looked at pictures of Salzburg.

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We were ready to make it official and book.

Then I got a new job. And the oh-so-lovely 25 vacations days that I had been accustomed to at my old company dwindled to a meager 10, which I have since learned is the corporate standard. With just 10 vacation days for the entire year, a 14-day trip to Central Europe wouldn't work unless I committed to not getting sick the rest of the year. I couldn't take the gamble, so we were on the hunt for a new honeymoon option.

Did anything affect your honeymoon plans at the last minute?