Has anyone booked a honeymoon without a travel agent? Advice?

We booked with out a travel agent, but we did a cruise so it was fairly simply. We booked flights to Venice and had the cruise line set up a transfer. If your concerned about areas to see, you can probably find day or over night tour groups online. My husband and I are planning a trip to Israel and we found companies that offer day trips to see some of the sights we want to visit. We are fairly certain that would still be cheaper than us having a travel agent set up the week for us. Even if you didn’t want to do tour groups, you can probably use those websites as guidance on what to visit and what areas to stay in.

I didn't want to plan our honeymoon after planning the wedding so I hired a travel agent. But, we are going on safari to two countries in a span of 12 days. If you've never been out of the country and this will be a long trip with multiple countries, I would recommend hiring a travel agent. But if it's just a week-long trip to one area, you can totally book the flights and reserve the accommodations yourself.

We booked our flights ourselves with credit card points and we've already booked a couple hotel nights, but I think for the rest we're using a travel agent.

I just booked our entire trip to New Zealand (we leave Saturday) entirely by myself.

I had already started by figuring out a way to get our flights (normally $3,000 PER person) for $75. Then I started looking at AirBnBs since I had some referral credits to use and ended up finding some really gorgeous and affordable ones. After that, all the things to do just sort of fell into place as I created a schedule - it's not like we could get discounts on tickets for any of those things (and I looked up every single thing for promo codes/specials/etc).

Schedule

View Quoted Comment Your wedding day is the day after my birthday

We booked on our own. Although ours was pretty easy as we just picked an all inclusive resort. I set an alert on kayak for flights. Once I found them at a low point, I booked the flights.

View Quoted Comment That’s exactly what I was thinking. I’ve found some great stuff so far so I think we’ll just stick to doing it that way.

View Quoted Comment Oh my gosh this is so organized! I love it! We’re planning our own wedding as well & we have spreadsheets galore, but that was my fear in doing it on my own. I’m ALWAYS living by spreadsheets & planning & I thought it would be nice to have someone else to that stuff for once. But seeing this makes me realize I find so much joy in planning and organizing! It’ll be a breeze.

Thanks so much for the insight, everyone. It’s been very helpful!

View Quoted Comment Really?! How awesome! It’s a week before my birthday! #Octoberbabies 🤗

View Quoted Comment Wow $75 is so cheap! How did you get those deals? I am from NZ but now live in California, and without deals I see the flights being $1800, and I have found deals for as low as $650 round trip. Where are you flying from? If you have any questions about NZ feel free to ask me. It was funny, I was looking at the websites which spoke of the top 10 honeymoon destinations, and I saw New Zealand was on the list. I wasnt surprised by this, it is a beautiful country with so much variety, so it will accommodate everyone's interests. But for me, havinf lived there for most of my life, it wouldn't feel much like a honeymoon because I would want to visit with family that I dont get to see often now that I am living in America.

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Long story short, my husband and I each signed up for 2 different credit cards, met the minimum spend requirements while planning and paying our wedding, and got sign-up bonus points for doing so. Within a year we had all the points we needed to fly for free, just had to pay $75 in taxes.

We are flying out of Boston. Last time I checked, the flights for our dates were $2,999 PER PERSON, so I'm stoked we figured out how to do all that.

I'm surprised it's a top location because the flights are not at all affordable for most people! We're building a house, like hell I was going to drop $6,000 on flights when that could go to the house haha.

Most travel agents do not charge a fee for their services so if you are wary about it, go for it!

Last year FH and I went to Europe for the first time and planned the flight, transportation to all locations, accomodations, intinerary, etc. all ourselves. I did a ton of research but it paid off and I felt like I had an internal sense of direction while we were there from studying maps so much (so God forbid we got lost in a foreign country and our phones stopped working, I felt pretty confident about getting around).

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I'm currently working on meeting the spend requirements to try to get points for the HM. It's my first CC and I didn't realize you can't pay things like a mortgage with a CC

We booked our honeymoon to Jamaica through Expedia, had no issues.

We planned our own honeymoon because I love expedia! 10 Days in Paris in the 4th arrondissement for $2100. You just have to check constantly, research areas. For me it was fun but that's just me lol

I used a travel agent because my trip was going to have many 'moving parts' like travel between cities and countries in Europe. I also had NO idea what I wanted to do so talking to someone who had suggestions was helpful. I would not use a travel agent for a simple trip (like staying in one city) because they can have ridiculous fees (like $100 per flight they book...). I wouldn't have worked with one if we didn't personally know the owner of the travel agency and have the fees waived. That being said, you can always do some research on local travel agents near you and ask them for advice and about their fees.

I haven't planned my honeymoon yet, but I did visit 14 countries while I studied abroad for 4 months in Europe. It took hours and hours and hours to plan, but I started several months before I left and planned most afternoons for my weekend trips/week-long adventures. I think planning a week-long trip to Venice is 100% doable. Peruse websites like SkyScanner and Next Vaca for less expensive flights (in an incognito window so it doesn't know you're looking) and take reviews into consideration. I think a lot of the fun is in planning since you build up anticipation! One tip I learned at the end is flights from Boston to Dublin, for example, are way less expensive than Boston to Alicante, Spain. And a flight from Dublin to Spain is super cheap once you're there. Take a look at other cities to see if their flights overseas are less expensive and if flying there first would make the whole trip cheaper. (ex. "I could save $300 total if I flew from X location to random Y location and then my final Z destination rather than searching X to Z and having them set layovers!")

ALSO make sure you have enough time between layovers! I had less than an hour layover in NY and not only did I almost miss my flights, my bags stayed in NY and I didn't get them for 4 days. Make sure you pack an extra change of clothes or 2 and toiletries in your carry-on.

Good luck!

View Quoted Comment Thank you SO much for this advice. It was so helpful! Like I actually screenshotted it Haha.

View Quoted Comment Great point!