I just returned from my honeymoon and the pile of shit on my desk isn't as enticing as the internet, so I figured I'd share a little from my recent experience.
FYI, the average couple spends approximately $5,100 on their honeymoon, and the vast majority of this usually comes from airfare and hotels.
We chose Portland (ME) and Boston, mostly because we did the west coast last year and wanted to flip coasts this year.
This isn't anything revolutionary, but to those of you getting married and still looking to have a good time on your honeymoon: as far in advance as possible, use credit card reward points to take care of airfare, hotels, or both. I'd recommend SPG for hotels and Southwest for airfare, but do your own research.
We stayed five nights in Portland and three nights in Boston. These hotels were right in the center of downtown with great views and luxury amenities, and averaged $375 per night. That alone is $3,000. Instead of paying that amount, we racked up our SPG rewards points for about sixteen months and used all of them for both cities. We ended up paying a net total of $354 for all eight nights.
The next big cost saver was driving instead of flying. Flights totaled about $800 for both of us. We instead elected to drive and spent about $95 on gas, but did spend approximately $280 to have my car stored for all eight days.
In summary,
What we could have spent just on hotels/airfare: $3,800
What we actually spent: $729.
This opened the floodgates to us guilt-free treating ourselves for eight days. We ate out for every lunch and dinner. We ordered wine at every dinner. I lost count how many times we had steak and lobster. We took cruises in the Casco Bay and Boston Harbor. We paid $150 to go on a "wine sail" in the Casco Bay on a 250 year old sailboat. We saw the Indians-Red Sox game at Fenway Park. We took trolley tours of each city. We paid to get into museums. All in all, we spent about $150-200 per day.
I totaled this when we got home and learned that we spent about $2,250 for the entire trip (or about 40% of what the average Americans spend on their honeymoons).
Of course, this isn't a brag about my frugality or anything. This post is geared towards those planning their honeymoon and looking to not have frugality overwhelm having a memorable experience. In regular life, you can get way ahead by being cognizant and trimming your biggest expenses (mortgage/rent, car payment, groceries, etc.). Similarly, on a honeymoon, if you trim hotels and airfare to basically nothing, that opens the floodgates to you doing almost whatever you want.
I know this isn't anything groundbreaking or revolutionary, but just wanted to document my experience so others could hopefully find my experience and enjoy a similar path--because our honeymoon was outstanding. Cheers!