3 Reasons Why I Delayed My Honeymoon
3 Reasons Why I Delayed My Honeymoon
Ask anyone who has been there, planning your wedding is stressful…and this is coming from someone who helps plan, organize, and lead weddings almost every weekend! I remember when Becky and I got married, the month leading up to the wedding I was fairly grumpier than normal. There were 1000 little decisions, responsibilities, to-do’s to take care of. Planning was no longer fun at that point. The Saturday before our wedding, we woke up, went out to breakfast, and said “This is our wedding week. Let’s just enjoy it for everything it is and everything we have done and been through in order to get here.” Some of the things we wanted to do for our reception didn’t get done. No one noticed. But calling the planning quits about a week before our wedding was one of the best decisions we made from a stress and memory standpoint. From that point forward, it wasn’t about the wedding. It was about the marriage.
We got married on Black Friday, largely because of my shooting schedule. Did I mention my wife is a saint? We picked our wedding day based on two factors – neither of us wanted to be hot on our day and my availability. It turned out that the end of November was my first availability last year so we went for it. It turned out perfect; it was unseasonably warm, no rain, and the most powerful and gorgeous golden hour right before our ceremony!
The whole wedding was just a long weekend of fun and festivities – rehearsal dinner, Lions game on Thanksgiving, wedding, then a mini, 3-day honeymoon in Detroit following our wedding. The day following the wedding, we were exhausted. Like, hit-by-a-Mack-truck exhausted. I couldn’t imagine having to travel anywhere that day except to the mini-bar located in the corner of the room.
Fast forward to today. I am exhausted, again. This time it is from the four flights and 30+ hours of traveling we just did coming home from our honeymoon. At some point, Becky looked at me during our trip and said, “You know, I am really glad we waited to go on our honeymoon.” We talked about that while lounging poolside and in the end, thought it might help some brides who are also considering the timing of their honeymoon.
So here you go…here are 3 reasons why I delayed my honeymoon:
It worked out better for my work schedule. Ok, so I will admit, this first one is really selfish. But it is true, it worked out better for my work schedule. Last year, I ended up booking some last minute weddings and proposals over Christmas, which is when we were originally looking at going on our honeymoon. I didn’t want to take time away from my students (I also teach high school in case you are new to the blog), so holiday breaks were really my only time to travel.
It saved us money and gave us more time/options to travel. With us not traveling around Thanksgiving (our wedding) or Christmas, the price and availability for flights and hotels was much better. We ended up booking a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Maldives for the same price as some more “local” destinations. Side note, even though we didn’t use it, we found that Costco Travel had some great deals on vacations.
It allowed us to focus on one thing at a time. Becky and I rarely argue or show a lack of patience with each other…unless is is the week of our wedding. Like I said, I wasn’t having fun at the end of the planning process. Once that line was drawn the week of the wedding, it felt like a weight was lifted off of my shoulders and all week, I was focusing on the wedding and, more importantly, the marriage. Both of us were very present on our wedding day, soaking every moment, memory, laughter, and tear up. Staying home for three days before going back to work allowed us time to enjoy and recount the day. The next few months were focused on our new house and getting ready for the next wedding season. By delaying our honeymoon, we got to embrace each and every new phase of the marriage. By the time our honeymoon rolled around nine months later, the ink had dried on our marriage license, we were settling into our roles as husband and wife, and we were ready to celebrate just that. Our conversations throughout the honeymoon covered everything from what we appreciate about each other, whether or not our expectation of marriage is different than the reality of it, to what is on our bucket list. In short, having a few months of marriage under our belt allowed us and our conversations to be much deeper and introspective, which added a little extra emotional weight to our time together.
Bonus: Delaying our honeymoon allowed us to relive our wedding day nine months later. I know, I know…I should have done it a long time ago. I am a photographer for goodness sake! I haven’t designed our wedding album since we received our photos over six months ago. I promised Becky I would design an album for us before our one-year anniversary (which is a great and common gift to give to each other as a couple, just saying.) So, one night on our honeymoon, we sat down with a bottle of champagne, looked through all of our photos, picked our favorites, designed the album (all 74 pages of it!) and watched our wedding video again. It was awesome and totally memorable. Instead of just talking about our wedding, we got to experience it all over again and made a little event out of it, with the sounds of waves crashing in the background. Definitely a memory worth keeping.
So there you have it. It might not be for everyone, but those are my 3 reasons why I delayed my honeymoon. It worked out better for us, largely because that little bit of time in between gave us some breathing room and allowed us to talk about our marriage, our goals, our experience so far, and our dreams together. And now, here is an unnecessary, but seemingly obligatory picture of us on our honeymoon. We aren’t big on sharing photos of ourselves on social media, so this is all you get 😉
Cheers!
