Honeymoon: When to book, and how much did YOU spend?

Our budget is $3000 and thankfully i was a nanny to a mother who is a travel agent. so she is planning everything for us. i have no idea where we are going but i do know that i want tropical with a beach and awesome service.

We paid $5700 for 9 nights at a hotel/resort on Hawaii. The cost also includes airfare and a rental car. We booked 9 months in advance using expedia.com

We're paying $4,200 for Punta Cana. All inclusive, airfare and transfer to/from hotel. We also booked the largest room available to get the honeymoon package. Mexico is beautiful. We go there every year for FH's work. If you're looking for a more tropical feel, I suggest Riviera Maya. It's 30-45 minutes from the Cancun airport, but is much more spread out. The Cancun strip is right on top of each other, and a more 'hotel' like feel. Personally, I enjoyed Riviera Maya better. If you book through Apple vacations, if they lower the price of your exact vacation, then they will price match. I would check into that. We originally booked 10 months out at $4,400, and there was a sale, so I called my travel agent and the price was lowered instantly to the sale price.

We are doing Mo-Sa in the Dominican Rep at an all inclusive resort with an awesome suite. The hotel with flight (plus insurance and transportation) came out to $2900. So, I assume with spending money for the week we will come out to around $4000 for the whole trip.

I paid less than your budget for 10 nights in Xcaret (Occidental Grand Xcaret) and Cozumel Mexico (5 nights at each) including airfare. We got a steal on the airfare using priceline.com I think we purchased the tickets 9 months in advance.

As far as airline tickets go buy them as soon as possible. I fly around 5-6 times a year and the best prices are always when you buy them early.

We went Black Friday weekend our budget was 5 grand we were under by 1,000 and we are going to sandals Antigua

Thanks, ladies! @Briggitte, that was one of the places we found! We have been looking at booking through Applevacations, and have found really good deals, including airfare! We are going to take your advice and book asap!!

We just booked an all-inclusive resort in Cabo San Lucas for 6 days under $900, including flights. We got a deal on the resort because we are doing a 90 minute sales presentation. It's not for everyone, but it's worth it to us to save a lot lof money.

We had a trip to Munich (for Oktoberfest) and Italy planned for last year until we realized we should put it off since we got engaged and had a wedding to plan. We used booking.com and so all the rooms were able to be cancelled without a fee. The nice thing is we can just use the same itinerary for our honeymoon! There's still some debate though...he will be in grad school and we are thinking of waiting till Christmas break. We are TTC right away so I don't want to put it off and not be able to drink wine if I'm prego lol...wherever & whenever we go it will be far away. We can do 6-7 hour flights once we have kids but the all day flights to Europe/Seychelles/Aruba will be out till the kids are at least 3 :/

Edit: The Europe trip is around 9k

I I just booked Sandals St. Lucia... it was $7k including airfare.... better be worth it, its the most I've ever spent on a vacation!

We booked our honeymoon about 7 months out, I’m also an OCD planner. We went to Ireland for 9 days and left a couple days after our wedding. Our first budget was around 3k. After talking with a travel agent we got a quote for a semi all-inclusive trip to Ireland for 4300. We decided to do it. I would say we ended up spending about **** total. We did almost every activity we could do…and didn’t skimp on drinks and food. We went all out because we could, it was our honeymoon! I don’t regret it at all.

About 6 months before, roughly $4300 to go to Hawaii for 5 days/5 nights from FL.

Honeymoon - Costa Rica - 7 nights - we are just booking now

Airfare - $860 total

Hotel - under $5000 - includes breakfast, airport transportation, 2 activities and a couples spa treatment

Extra expenses such as food/drinks/activities we are budgeting $1500 - gift from my parents.

We need to book our Portugal honeymoon in the next couple months. Hoping for less than $3000 for our flights, then I'll shop around for a hotel. Package deals are expensive and we don't want to do any group tours with strangers

We booked 6 months out for a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains for 5 nights, our budget is around $2500.

We booked Sandals in St. Lucia (LaToc) for a little under 8k. That covers the all-inclusive part and airfare. We booked super early to get it out of the way.

We're planning on doing a honeymoon in Italy and Ireland! Don't have the details ironed out yet, but I'm using the travel rewards points card to pay for all the wedding stuff, so hopefully we'll have enough points for one of us to fly free, or upgrade to first class for both! So looking forward to the honeymoon, maybe even more than the wedding!

I booked mine last month and it was close to $5000 to go to Italy for 2 weeks. We still have to purchase train tickets, tours, and food though.

Erin – we pretty much did a full circle of Ireland, basically visited every place you’d want to visit when going there. I know some frown…but we went with Contiki. It was an amazing experience. We met people from all around the world and experienced so many gorgeous and fun places.

We booked last night!!! So excited. We are going to an all inclusive in Jamaic for a week in June and the total including airfare was slightly over $3,000.