The Pros and Cons of a Delayed Honeymoon

The bride and groom leaving for...?

Delayed honeymoons are making the news these days, with people speaking out both in favor of and against them. I’m glad to see I’m riding the wave of what is apparently a trend, since four years after my own wedding we have yet to take a honeymoon (and no, family members, getting married in Florida does not make the wedding our de facto honeymoon). I feel like the queen of delayed honeymoons! Because if I delay it any longer, any honeymoon momentum we still have is going to fizzle out.

What is a delayed honeymoon? Just what it sounds like: the bride and groom (insert b/b or g/g as necessary) make their way to the exit of the reception venue, say their goodbyes, climb in to their wedding limo, and head… home? It’s more common than you may think! Plenty of couples are now going without a post-nuptial vacay for financial reasons. The destination wedding crowd often combine the ‘moon with the matrimony. And some folks are now advocating for NOT leaving for the honeymoon directly after the wedding rings are slipped on for practical reasons more than anything else.

The Pros of Delaying the Honeymoon:

  • How about a chance to breathe? You’ve planned a wedding, executed a wedding, and now your next step immediately after is hopping in the car or on a jet plane? Slow down there! Why not go home, unwrap those wedding gifts, cash the checks, etc., and get your life in order before setting off?
  • A delayed honeymoon can be a better, more glamorous honeymoon. Post-wedding trips may not be all they can be because couples who’ve just dropped a load of dough on a wedding may not have much to spend. When waiting means saving up, the world is your honeymoon oyster.
  • When you a delay a honeymoon, you have a chance to come down off that wedding high that was at once glorious and hideously stressful. I’m not saying your wedding day isn’t beautiful, but my guess is that parts of it were anxiety-inducing, as well. A week or more of relaxation – or at least of basic everyday living – can do wonders for a person’s state of mind.

The Cons of Delaying the Honeymoon:

  • Immediately after the wedding, brides and grooms tend to be in the half-lidded romance zone, and there’s something glorious about jetting off to an exotic location when there are still stars in your eyes. Going away immediately keeps things romantic that much longer.
  • It’s easier to lobby for honeymoon discounts when you’re actually a very recent newlywed, and you still have that just-married look about you. Would my haggard working mama self be convincing as a starry-eyed bride? I think not.
  • You may end up like me, with no honeymoon and little chance of ever taking one. After first, the assumption was we’d wait a year to go on our delayed honeymoon. My guess? Four years later, we’re no closer to honeymoon, and I’d feel pretty weird calling any trip The Beard and I took by that name.

What do you think about delayed honeymoons – are you in the pro camp or the con camp? If it wasn’t an absolute necessary would you (or did you) consider waiting to take the ‘moon?

Image: Lindsay Tan

6 Responses to “The Pros and Cons of a Delayed Honeymoon”

  1. Nariya says:

    On my wedding night, I just wanted to go to bed. I wanted to go to bed for a week. It’s been three years and we haven’t gone on a honeymoon, but I don’t miss it. I never got the whole starry-eyed-just-married thing… Maybe because we were dating for so long, it didn’t feel that different to be married? Anyway, I haven’t regretted not taking a honeymoon so far.

  2. Gina says:

    We live in Sonoma County, so after our wedding we took off for a night on the coast at a romantic lodge with a superb restaurant. We had already decided we were going to delay the honeymoon but still wanted to do something special for our wedding night. It was a nice escape and we able to attend a special brunch my mother-in-law planned for us!

  3. Anonymous says:

    We had a low key, no stress, cheap! honeymoon. Best decision we made about the whole wedding process. We just rented a cabin for a few days. It was wonderful. All we did was sleep and eat and um, do honeymoon stuff. I absolutely say no to the whole idea of a major once-in-a-lifetime style honeymoon where the couple spends the whole time trying to fit everything in and no time just resting and bonding as a new couple. Do I want to take a European tour or a cruise or go backpacking in Costa Rica? Absolutely, but if we’d done that right after the wedding, I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy it. That said, I wouldn’t have ever skipped having a honeymoon after our wedding. I needed to not deal with people (except for hubby) for a little while.

  4. Twistie says:

    We only delayed the trip overnight. We spend the night in a local B&B, went to visit my father the next day, and then took off on a lazy driving trip up the coast to Vancouver.

    My feeling on the subject, though, is that it’s a very individual choice. Some people want to race off, some prefer to stay put for a while, and some of us (like Mr. Twistie and me) split the difference a bit.

  5. Katie says:

    We left for our honeymoon 2 days after the wedding, and though we had a short break, it was hard to get our heads around organising something else. I wanted some time to sort myself out! That said, we had a great time, and I would have been hard pushed to call a later trip our ‘honeymoon’

  6. Nony Mouse says:

    Our honeymoon was only slightly delayed… by about a month. Gave us a chance to breathe, get a few things back in order (since it was a wedding close to family, not where we lived), etc. before we left on the honeymoon.