Just as in planning your wedding you’re invariably faced with people and magazines telling you that your wedding day is the best day of your life, you’re also told that your honeymoon is the most important holiday you will ever plan. And so, you have to get it right, it has to be perfect, otherwise your honeymoon will be a bit of a failure. Right?
Wrong.
Now, you might think that as the writer of a honeymoon website I’d be all for telling you that this is the biggest, most important, best holiday of your lives. But, personally, I think that’s complete hogswash. Yes, the honeymoon is, by it’s nature, important – it’s a great chance for you and your new spouse to get away and relax after the wedding, and it can be a great excuse for a blow-out holiday that you otherwise might not be able to justify. But you two have your whole lives ahead of you – if this is your best holiday ever then you may as well just stay at home for the rest of your lives, because nothing else is going to live up to this.
Matthew and I had a wonderful honeymoon in South Africa. I won’t pretend that it was perfect because there are a few things we would definitely do differently if we did the same trip again, but it was pretty amazing – we stayed in some gorgeous places, saw some fantastic animals and beautiful scenery, and, best of all, had some proper time together. But I can tell you already that it wasn’t out best ever holiday – that accolade currently has to go to our holiday last year to New York and New Orleans. Does it sadden me that this newer holiday was better than our more expensive, four-week long honeymoon? No way. We’ve got years and years of holidays ahead of us, so this “best ever holiday” is definitely going to continue to change with that.
So why am I telling you this? Because if you’re planning your honeymoon and worrying that you might get something “wrong” – that the hotel you’ve chosen might not actually be nicer than the other one you could’ve picked, that it might be too rainy or too hot, that you might actually hate the destination you’ve chosen – then you really don’t need to. The mere fact that it’s your honeymoon will make this a great holiday, wherever you go and whatever you do. And if it’s not? Yes, it’ll be disappointing, but it’s really not the end of the world. The great thing about being married is that anniversaries make a great excuse for more great holidays – so you’ll just have to go away again. And that’s not too much of a hardship, is it?
