A Honeymoon Debacle…and being responsible

So way back when Dane and I were going to get married in May (ha! seems kind of comical now that we completely re-arranged our wedding and now May is TOTALLY feasible)..anyway..

Back at that point, our honeymoon destination was Bora Bora. Signed. Sealed. Delivered. Thank you, come again.

We had dreams of over-water huts and jumping from our bed to the ocean each morning for a casual swim.

Fast forward a little bit and our wedding is now in August. Fine, no problem. But here’s where it gets tricky…
We have been planning to go to Australia/New Zealand over New Year’s Eve 2014 into 2015 with dreams of lasso-ing a koala to ring in the new year. Okay, maybe that’s just me, but Hawaii is far too close (and moderately affordable) not to take advantage of the little hop, skip & jump that Australia requires. In addition, we are flying back to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving, as well as heading to Europe in Spring 2015.
Our timeline would look a bit like this:
Flight to PA
Wedding
Flight to Bora Bora
Honeymoon
Flight back to Hawaii
Flight to PA
Thanksgiving
Flight back to Hawaii
Dane’s 30th…eeek!
Christmas
Australia/New Zealand
Europe

If you’re noticing anything it’s going to be a bit of a money hemorrhage come Fall 2014 and on. Add to that, the amount of money it takes to get to and stay in Bora Bora in one of those picturesque little huts (because let’s be honest, if you’re going to go there–the huts are necessary!) is about as much as a down payment on a house. We were looking at right around $15,000 by the time it was all said and done.

Yeah.

So, the more we talked and the more we were realistic with ourselves and our wants/needs, we decided against spending that kind of money. I’ll just come right out and say it–Sometimes being responsible is a real buzzkill. But all I could think about was the pit in my stomach flying home after 8 days of vacation knowing we had spent that much money and had nothing more than a tan (that we could easily get in our backyard) and some pictures to show for it.

After this decision was made, I took a giant leap of faith (for my very control-freak detail oriented self)–I told Dane to book something within our designated budget that was all-inclusive and completely surprise me.

Considering he reads this blog, I’d love to hear where some of YOU went on your honeymoon in the comments and maybe he will get some really great ideas from you fine folks 🙂
Happy Wedding Wednesday!