Planning a Honeymoon Without Another Spreadsheet

By the time the honeymoon comes up, one of you has spent a year running a wedding like a small logistics company. The last thing that person wants is another spreadsheet with tabs. And yet the honeymoon usually lands on them anyway, because they're the one who's got good at it.

That's the trap worth avoiding. A honeymoon planned by one exhausted person tends to come out looking like one person's trip.

Decide the pace before the destination

The most important honeymoon decision isn't where — it's how fast. Two very different trips are hiding behind the same budget: a five-city run that you'll need a holiday to recover from, or one base and a lot of long lunches. Agree on that first and the destination shortlist mostly picks itself.

Both of you plan it, in small pieces

Ten minutes on the sofa each beats one person's three-hour research session. The trick is having somewhere you can both add to casually — a restaurant you heard about, a cove someone sent a reel of — so the plan accumulates instead of being built.

This is what bothways is actually for. One shared trip you can both open, so you each drop in what you care about and the itinerary ends up looking like both of you. No accounts to reconcile, no version that's more current than the other.

Save the reason, not just the name

"Casa something" in your notes app is worthless six weeks later. Save the spot with the detail attached — closed Mondays, book two weeks out, the rooftop one not the other location — and it survives the gap between hearing about it and standing outside it.

Under-schedule on purpose

Two fixed things a day is the ceiling, and one is often better. The honeymoons people describe fondly years later are almost never the ones with the fullest itineraries. Protecting the empty afternoons is a real planning decision, not laziness — and it's much easier to protect when you can both see the day laid out.

• One anchor a day, booked; everything else optional
• Keep the arrival day empty — you'll be wrecked
• Book the two dinners that matter, leave the rest to walking past somewhere

You've already done the hard planning this year. The honeymoon should take an hour, spread across a few evenings, with both of you adding to the same plan.