Honeymoon Travel

A honeymoon is the one trip most couples plan in the least time, in the middle of a wedding, with the most riding on it. We take that pressure off. Tell one travel designer where you are drawn to, how much time you have and how you like to spend a day — early or late, on the move or barely moving — and the trip is built around those answers rather than around a brochure.

That means no fixed itinerary to fit yourselves into. The same destination can be ten days of doing very little in one villa, or a week that moves from a city to a coast. Both are honeymoons. The point of talking to a designer first is to work out which one is yours before anything is booked.

The Maldives is the honeymoon most couples picture first, and for good reason: a short flight from Indian cities, a villa over the water, and days that need no plan at all. Read our Maldives guide for how the atolls differ and when the sea is calmest.

Bali is the other great first choice — private villas with their own pools, a green interior around Ubud, and beaches on the south coast — and it suits couples who want a little more to do than sit still. It is the easiest first step into Indonesia for Indian travellers.

Closer to home, Kerala gives a honeymoon that needs no long flight and no visa: a night on the backwaters, the tea country around Munnar, and a quiet stretch of coast to finish. It is the answer for couples travelling soon after the wedding, or when the passport is still in the old name.

For couples who want Europe, Italy and Greece are where most honeymoons go: the Amalfi Coast, Tuscany and Venice; Santorini and the islands. They need more lead time than the beach destinations because a Schengen visa has to be in hand before you fly — see each country guide for the current position.

Japan is the honeymoon for couples who would rather share cities, food and gardens than a beach; Thailand pairs Bangkok with the islands of the Andaman coast; and Kenya lets a couple spend their first week together on safari and finish on the coast.

Every honeymoon we design starts with the first two days deliberately slow. You arrive tired from the wedding, so the first stop is somewhere you can stay put, with private transfers from the airport and nothing scheduled. Movement, if there is any, comes later in the trip.

Accommodation is chosen for privacy before anything else — a villa with its own pool, an overwater villa, a room away from the family wings of a resort. Where a hotel offers something for honeymooners, we ask on your behalf; most will want to see the wedding date on a document, so keep a copy of the marriage certificate with you.

Meals, excursions and any surprises are arranged only if you want them. Some couples want a private dinner on the sand; others want the freedom to find their own table each evening. We plan the one you ask for and never assume the other.

Rest and a beach: the Maldives, Kerala or the Thai islands, one base, and a trip measured in how little you did. This is the right shape for couples arriving straight from a large wedding.

An island and a city: Bali with a few nights in Ubud and a few on the coast, or Thailand with Bangkok before the islands. More variety, still gentle.

Culture and food: Italy, Greece or Japan — trips with things to see every day, best for couples who get restless after two days by a pool and would rather remember meals and streets than a sea view.

Wild and wide: a Kenyan safari or the mountains of a country you have never seen. The least conventional honeymoon and, for the right couple, the one that gets talked about for the rest of their lives.

Most Indian weddings fall between November and February, which happens to be the best season for the Maldives, Kerala and Thailand: dry, calm seas and long evenings. A honeymoon booked straight after a winter wedding lands in exactly the right window for the beach destinations.

The same dates are the cold, short-day months in Italy and Greece. A European honeymoon is usually better taken a little later — spring and early summer, or September and October — even if that means a short trip first and the longer one a few months on. Bali is at its driest from April to October, and Japan is at its best in spring and autumn.

Passports first. Most countries want a passport valid for six months beyond your travel dates, and a passport in a new married name takes time to issue. Travel and book every ticket in the name that is on the passport you will carry; changing the name can wait until you are home.

Visas next. The Maldives, Thailand, Bali and Kerala are quick for Indian passport holders; Europe and Japan are not, and the application has to be made well before you fly. Each country guide on this site states the current position, and your designer will tell you honestly whether the dates you have in mind leave enough time.

Then the honest conversation about budget and pace. A honeymoon is not the trip to squeeze five places into eight nights. Tell us the real number and the real dates, and we will show you what that buys in two or three destinations rather than promising all of them.