While you are planning your 1 – 2 week honeymoon with your new second half, stop for a moment and consider extending it a year. Start dreaming now about leaving your world at home for 1 year and traveling together through the good and the bad, through the sickness and health. Nothing strengthens a bond more than travel. You spend a year planning a wedding, why not take the next year off to travel?
Although this may seem crazy to a lot of you reading this, I can honesty tell you that there are increasingly more couples spending a year traveling together, myself being one of them.
I can hear you now “My wedding is costing me mucho bucks, how am I supposed to afford a year long honeymoon?”
I would suggest two options:
1. Following your wedding, escape somewhere nearby for the weekend. Stay a night or two and celebrate your new marriage and then head home and start saving! Look at your budget together and cut out the Starbucks, expensive rent and eating out nightly. Create an account in your bank and start putting money in on a regular basis.
2. If you must get away for a week+, do your research and stick to a budget. Instead of asking for items on your gift list, have your guests donate money to your honeymoon fund. Trust me the spatula you registered for won’t matter when you are traveling through SE Asia. We actually sold most everything we owned before we left for our trip.
Your year long trip doesn’t have to be the same year as your wedding. Josh and I committed to this trip and have been working hard and ruthlessly saving for 3 years. We quit our jobs 3 months ago and have been exploring SE Asia since (which is why I have yet to post for almost 5 months!).
Travel together NOW! Before the urge to put a big down payment on a house happens or before the baby bug bites. Spend time getting to know each other and enjoying your marriage before you add in more parts in the puzzle.
Here are a few articles I have written on our travel blog Traveling 9 to 5
What Pushed us Over the Edge to Travel
Why you should stop shoulding on yourself
We are traveling the world because we are rich
How to tell your job you are leaving to travel the world
How to plan your own RTW Trip Part 1 & Part 2
Are you convinced yet? Have you reached for your planner and picked a date? Did the possibility of a year of travel excite you? Let me know when you start planning – I have lots of travel tips to share!
Kristin Hornberger
That is awesome, Carolyn! Good for you. What a great experience. Enjoy your well-deserved year-long ‘honeymoon’! XXOO, Kristin