The honeymoon is booked, and I am already dreaming of days on the beach with a cold drink!

I have never been to the Caribbean, let alone traveled much at all, so the honeymoon was a big decision and we wanted to make the ‘perfect’ choice. We both had ideas of what we wanted and once we put them together, decided that a Caribbean vacation on a white sand beach with lots of activities would be it. We looked at some different options on our own to decide on a practical budget, and then worked with a travel agent who could get us the biggest bang for our buck. She was such a great help and will be able to handle anything that comes up to alleviate any stress from us.

So, the final decision was Sandals St. Lucia – Halcyon Resort!!! I can’t wait!

Oy. The decisions one must make during wedding planning… because you can try and put them off for as long as possible but eventually – they needs to be made, y’all. One of those major decisions has hit The Boy and I right smack dab in our collective faces, too. And that decision is – where will we be honeymooning?

From the moment we began planning a wedding, we also knew that we wanted to do a honeymoon. See, one of the major reasons that we’re getting married is because we want kids (not romantic but very true) and, due to our ages, we really do need to start trying pretty soon after we get married. So, a honeymoon would be more to us than a fun trip together post-wedding. It’ll be our last big vacation without kids for a long, long time. Because of that, we really want to do it up right.
p style=text-align: leftSo, we’ve been tossing around ideas for places to go and have been trying really hard to come up with a compromise. I want the beach. He wants history (actually, he wanted to go to a hunting lodge but there is NO WAY IN @*%*% I’m spending my vacation butchering something thankyouverymuch). Anyhoo, we’ve narrowed it down to three options:
strong/strong/p
p style=text-align: centerstrongLondon, England (and surrounding areas)/strong/p
p style=text-align: centera href=http://thebudgetsavvybride.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/London.jpgimg class=aligncenter size-full wp-image-13608 src=http://thebudgetsavvybride.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/London.jpg alt= width=600 height=478 //a/p
p style=text-align: center(Image Courtesy of: a href=http://www.studylanguages.org target=_blank target=_blankStudy Languages/a)/p
p style=text-align: left
The Boy was stationed in England and Wales in the early 1980’s and LOVED it. Unfortunately, due to the political climate of the time, he was never allowed to visit Ireland and that’s always bugged him. Also, one of his good friends (whom I adore) is currently stationed there and it would be fun to see him again./p
p style=text-align: centerstrongCrete, Greece/strong/p
p style=text-align: centera href=http://thebudgetsavvybride.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Crete.jpgimg class=aligncenter size-full wp-image-13607 src=http://thebudgetsavvybride.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Crete.jpg alt= width=500 height=333 //a/p
p style=text-align: center(Image Courtesy of: a href=http://www.lannavacations.com target=_blank target=_blankLanna Vacations/a)/p
p style=text-align: leftThe beach! Yummy food! History! This is the one that I’m pulling for, especially after we discovered the a title=Armed Forces Vacation Club href=http://www.afvclub.com/ target=_blankArmed Forces Vacation Club/a – they offer killer deals on lodging all over the world to members of the armed forces and veterans. We found out that you can rent a fully furnished apartment only 100 meters from the beach for just $53.00 a day. A DAY! Score/p
p style=text-align: centerstrongNew Orleans, Louisiana/strong a href=http://thebudgetsavvybride.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/New_Orleans.jpgimg class=aligncenter size-full wp-image-13606 src=http://thebudgetsavvybride.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/New_Orleans.jpg alt= width=560 height=366 //a/p
p style=text-align: center(Image Courtesy of: a href=http://madeinneworleans.org/ target=_blank target=_blankMade in New Orleans/a)/p
p style=text-align: leftThis is our omigodwehavenomoney option. Neither of us has been there before and, after the devastating one-two combo of Hurricane Katrina and Gulf Coast spill, we loved the idea of helping support the economy with our tourist dollars. Plus, we lurve eating fresh seafood and mocking drunk people (preferably at the same time)./p
So, have any of you made your honeymoon plans yet? How’d you make the decision? Which place do you think we should pick? Are any of you going to (or have any of you been to) London, Greece, or New Orleans? What should we know before we go? In the meantime, you can also a href=http://pinterest.com/kissmytulle/honeymoony/ target=_blankfollow my honeymoon board on Pinterest/a and see what I’m thinking of packing!

These are just some random pics from the last days of our honeymoon. By that point I had lost interest in taking many photos so I didn’t take any the last full day we were there. We spent a little too much time at the swim up bar, if you know what i’m saying.

When you go to a resort they like to do silly things like this to your towels:

Me rocking my favorite dress- Marshall’s- $19.99! What what?

E was watching South Park on my laptop… how romantic.

Re-rocking my rehearsal dinner dress for our one fancy dinner night at the resort.

I love this pic!

Yes, I am THAT girl who takes pics of her food. This was like some kind of mango salad. Yummy.

I don’t even remember what I ordered for dinner but those mashed potatoes have a Power T made of carrots… they must’ve known I love the VOLS! (Truth be told I didn’t eat much of my dinner because it didn’t sit well with me. I ended up getting sick later that night! No bueno)

This is the last pic I have from our honeymoon! I think it’s a good one to end on.

So I realized that I never finished my honeymoon recap. I got too wrapped up in wedding recap as soon as I got those pics back! haha. So I suppose better late than never, right? These pics are from our one and only excursion outside our resort. We decided to do a mountain zipline. This trip included lunch and a horseback ride up to the top of the mountain before ziplining down 25 different cables!

The view from the top of the base camp.

bananas? plantains? i dunno.

haha whoops, it’s sideways. These horses were so skinny, it was really sad. We rode them for about an hour to the top of the zipline course, and then they just turned the horses loose and they walked home by themselves. They do it every day so they know where to go. Crazy!

Getting ready for the ziplines!!

Woo hoo!

I was SO sore the next day. From holding up my legs and using my arm to brake… LOL

We didn’t get to take a ton of pics on this trip because in the middle of the zipline course it just started POURING out of nowhere. It actually got cold! It was bizarre. Here we are in front of one of the 7 waterfalls we zipped over- and as you can see we are soaked.

Excited to be done- and ready for lunch! haha

If you haven’t noticed yet, I’m quite the picture-taker. My husband… not so much. So ther’es alot more pics of him than me… haha. Here’s hubby on the beach… we both brought books from the Sookie Stackhouse series with us on the honeymoon. He finished book 6- I just finished book 2. We can’t wait for True Blood to start back in a few weeks on HBO! We dont get to read much so we LOVE reading on vacations.

View of the beach- it was a gorgeous day!

Most of our photos together look like this, since we didn’t ask alot of people to take our picture. I’m wearing my hair flower by Kasia Fink! I loved it too much to stop wearing it!

this fella was always wandering around by the pool.

I caught E doing this alot over the course of the week. We was messing with his ring- i think it’s taking some getting used to.

We lounged under these and enjoyed some nice quiet reading time and cocktails. So relaxing!!