The wedding business has become truly remarkable. My ods and his fiancée are spending so. much. money…gulp, that it makes me want to scream “elope!!!” Now, it has come to my mind that oh lord, in addition to all that, is he going to be expected to produce an also-ridiculous honeymoon? He’s a poor grad student working part time.
Most people I know have honeymoons within their budget (except for one of Mr R’s brothers and his wife whose father paid for a nearly month-long European excursion). Honeymoons tend to be roadtrips around the US or a week at a nice US destination. Many don’t have honeymoons at all (raises hand) right after their wedding and instead save up for a nice vacation later.
Nobody has to buy anything they don’t want to. You can take a three-week getaway to Bora Bora or you can go to Disney World for a week or you can go to Boston for a weekend. I don’t imagine any responsible grown adult who is presumably ready to get married would feel expected to throw away money they don’t have on a honeymoon they can’t afford.
In my opinion, nobody should have ANY expectations when it comes to the wedding and the honeymoon. It should be whatever the couple wants to do and within the realm of whatever the budget will allow.
My two kids’ nuptials are this year. One was in fact just five days ago and they are on their honeymoon right now. Both of my daughters are having very different weddings from one another, but both were given the same amount of money (from me) for these. D2 and her fiancé were given additional money from the groom’s parents for the wedding. Both couples not only are planning the kind of weddings they want, they are keeping in the budget of the money allotted to them. Neither are doing it up high end.
As far as honeymoons…D1 and new spouse are now on a 2.5 week trip to five countries in Asia. Yes, this does seem like a lot. My daughter has held a professional job for three years. As well, they are staying in private rooms in hostels. My younger daughter and her fiancé are planning a 9 day honeymoon to Hawaii. In their 7 year relationship, they have never been on a pleasure trip together for more than a weekend. They (or at least I know my daughter) works 7 days and 7 nights. I am so happy they are taking this trip. The groom’s parents gave them hotel points for one of their two hotel stays. And while I know some are against this, this couple wants very little in terms of gifts/registry and they are also setting up a honey fund as an option if guests want to do that as a gift.
My daughters combined their assets with their SOs long before the ceremony, so there wasn’t an expectation that the groom would provide the honeymoon. The couple decided together where to go and how much to spend. I get the impression this is the way many young folks do it today, though I know there are still some “who pays for what” lists that designate the groom as paying for the honeymoon.
My currently engaged d and her fiancé won’t be swimming in money so they’re already budgeting for a nice yet affordable trip. It’s 14 months away, which gives them a decent amount of time to find the best fares and hotel options, etc.
My middle d and her husband had no time for an extended trip so they had a mini-moon - a one-night stay at a lovely inn, well-known for great food and excellent service. They had a longer trip several months later.
The honeymoons are as varied as the couples. My oldest niece and her H went to Australia. My 2nd niece and her H went to Disneyland and a cruise from TX. Another friend’s D went on an extended road trip with tents and visited a lot of extended family members.
Most of the couples I’ve known who had amazing (meaning $$) weddings cut back on the honeymoon. They figured, we can take a costly trip in a year or two. I would have done – in fact, did! – just the opposite, but whatever.
My D and fiance (summer 2017 wedding) are potentially doing a mini-moon and then taking a delayed honeymoon in the spring for a number of reasons:
- want to spend a little time with people that have traveled to their wedding
- avoid their midwest locale in January
- will have more vacation days, as 2017 days will be used up not only for their wedding events, but weddings of pals
- avoid travel in busy summer season
- will have a few months to save even more money
- after paying for the wedding items they are covering, they will have a lot more frequent flyer miles
Knowing these two, they’ll be spending wisely on honeymoon. Guessing a lot will be covered by their
airline and hotel miles…
I don’t think anyone should be expected to pay for a honeymoon they can’t afford. We are paying for D’s reception (in 2 weeks!) and she & fiance are footing the rest, but they have both been working for 4 years and have no college debt. They live in a tiny apartment and have little room for more things, so did do the gauche thing of having spots in their registry for guests to contribute to their honeymoon. They are going to St Lucia (both are certified divers) and will probably come back with Zika!
Our 35th anniversary is in July. I’m hoping for the honeymoon we never had.
My daughter and her fiance are planning more of a vacation than a honeymoon. They won’t be able to do anything right after they marry as he’s in grad school their wedding is a week or so before the end of the semester. They’ve been living together for a few years and make financial plans together. They want to go to Germany since he grew up there and hasn’t been back since he was a young boy. My husband and I had one night in a Sheraton (oooh a hotel!) before going back to work. Fortunately, in the 37 years since then we’ve had some nice trips!
When I got married, we were young and we were students. I don’t know how we did it, but we went on a honeymoon to Paradise Island (which wasn’t as built up as it is now). On our honeymoon, we promised to return on our 5th anniversary and we did. At that point, we were only one year out of grad school. We promised to come back on our 10th anniversary, and we did. After that, we decided to not wait 5 years to go back to the Caribbean and to also pick a new island. We picked Anguilla, which became our favorite and we went nine times. For every year of marriage, we took one vacation together without children. It wasn’t always as glamorous as the Caribbean, but we found it important to do that every year, no matter how much money we had. We did something to fit the budget.
@soozievt, we were like you! We went to a travel agent (remember those?) and told him we didn’t have much money. He recommended an all-inclusive resort in Jamaica. We scraped up money and went. We had a great time. The resort had a strict, no-tipping policy, but our waiter still asked for one. I’m sure he assumed that since we were American, we were very wealthy. Ha! My husband used a student loan to buy my wedding ring set.
I certainly hope not mamabear1234!
And thumper1, H and I never had a honeymoon either. But we did go to an all inclusive in Cancun this past March. We told them it was our 30th,which it was, only a few weeks before, and they treated us like we were on our honeymoon. This includes a rose petal strewn path, on the last night, to the bubble bath in the hot tub in our room. Chocolates and a bottle of the bubbly on ice were waiting too. Hahaha! They did lots of other stuff throughout the week as well.
Never mind that we had been at the same resort the year before as just regular guests. Figured since it was our 30th, we might as well tell them and finally get our honeymoon!
@mamabear1234 , my daughter and future son-in-law have an October, 2016 wedding and are also heading to St. Lucia. I love that part of the Caribbean!
H and I never had a honeymoon. We were four months pregnant at the time, to be honest. We’ve had a lifetime together, that will have to do. 
D and SIL did an Alaskan cruise and camping, later in the summer from their wedding. SIL is a wiz at getting airline miles, so he figured out that part for free. They’d already been living together for quite a few years, so there was no expectation of one expecting something from the other.
I used to think Honey Funds were tacky, but now that I see many new couples are doing them because they really don’t want a lot of stuff (in part thanks to the book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing), I see no reason why to add to their collection of ‘stuff’ if they choose that is not a priority in their lives. Of course, so many couples are living together today before getting married, that they’ve already accumulated a collection of true necessities. So I’m all for celebrating their new start in life with contributing toward making experiences happen. My attitude about this has really changed in the last year or two - some of it thanks to posts on CC. (and here we all thought opinions don’t get changed either way from things we read on internet discussion boards!)
@teriwtt there are still many, many people out there (especially here on CC as I learned while doing my own wedding planning) who think it’s “tacky” for a couple to not have a registry. The idea that people don’t want/need more stuff is just lost on some people.
We weren’t in a financial position to do a honeymoon (so we couldn’t even set up a “honey fund”) after our wedding but also didn’t need more stuff since we’d been living together for years. Through our families, we spread the word that we would like checks/cash or nothing at all (which we were totally fine with!) since we just didn’t have the room to take stuff back to our house (our wedding was 4 hours away from where we live and all we had was a little Kia to transport things). Alas, people still insisted on giving us stuff and most of it never made it to our house.
I only learned about HoneyFunds in the past year or so either here on CC or through my kids who had friends who had these. I felt a bit like you, @teriwtt, at first, but no longer do (same as you). When I think about it, many people give money as a gift and so a Honeyfund is not all that different, other than it allocates the money toward specific aspects of the honeymoon.
Here is how things have gone for my two daughters in this regard:
D1: just had a very small wedding and so not a lot of gifts, other than close relatives. However, within the past year they moved into a new apartment in a new city and almost entirely decorated and equipped it from scratch, with only a little from the past. They have almost all new stuff, the kinds of stuff one would sometimes get as newlyweds. They really didn’t need gifts so much. They got a few. They also got money from one living set of grandparents. They are funding their own honeymoon.
D2: They are to be married soon. They have been living together for two years, and independently prior to that. However, all their stuff I would call a hodgepodge of hand-me-downs and not new. HOWEVER, they don’t seem to care about acquiring new or more stuff. D’s fiancé really only wanted a Honeyfund and not a registry. I don’t care what they do, but did mention that some people may not like giving money or contributing to a Honeyfund (which is kinda similar) and may wish to get a gift. As well, I mentioned that this is the one time in their life they will likely get these things and are not apt to buy them for themselves (right now, really can’t afford and in the future, may use discretionary money for kids!). I know I am still using mostly what I got when I got married 39 years ago (with a few exceptions). D discussed having a basic registry with fiancé with a few things on it, though they don’t want set of dishes, flatware, pots, etc. They do need new linens and so will list that and a few other items, but not too many things. They will also set up the Honeyfund. Actually, this is all happening right now as they are addressing the invitations too. The Honeyfund has items on it like night in the hotel, dinner, sunset cruise, etc. I get the feeling that their friends do this too. Several recently got married and several are engaged. The majority of the guests are their cohort of friends and not older folks.
I have a question about the HoneyFund and sites like this. Are people really buying a meal at X restaurant or a tour of XYZ ahead of time or are they just getting a check from the HoneyFund site after the wedding. Also, I’ve read that these sites take a percentage of the money. Does anyone know how these things work.
I like to buy gifts, but unless the couple is registered somewhere, I now write a check and send it to the couple.