Getting
married? For the first time? Second? Third? Known your partner for ever? Or
just a short time? Are you planning every single detail of your wedding day, or
just hoping that without any effort on your part, everything will turn out just
fine?
Unless
you’re unique, at this very moment, like most people about to be married,
you’re wholly immersed in your wedding plans. Keeping the telephone hot, you’re
querying this or that reception venue, comparing the virtues of this or that
florist and agonising over the choices being offered to you.
And
this is the case whether you’re marrying for the first time or this is an
encore wedding either for one or both of you, whether you’ve already shared
much of your life with your present partner, or your marriage is to be a
complete change of status for you both. Whatever your personal situation,
whatever the style of your wedding, you’ll spend much of your time planning
every detail of your wedding day.
Why?
Because, whatever your situation, you want your wedding day to be a day to
remember.
But
what about the honeymoon? Is that just going to happen? Or are you planning to
make it happen? According to one set of statistics, more than 90% of couples
who choose a traditional wedding will celebrate their togetherness by taking a
honeymoon. On an average, 14% of the wedding expenditure will constitute the
honeymoon. In practical terms, the honeymoon will cost three times as much as
the average yearly vacation that the couple will take throughout their lives.
Is
the cost and time invested in planning a honeymoon worth the effort?
Obviously
the intimate details of the success or otherwise of a honeymoon are not readily
accessible. Still, there are just enough hints being dropped to suggest that
rarely does it exceed expectations. Quite the contrary, in fact! And it seems
no different whether it’s a repeat performance or the very first honeymoon for
both partners. As far back as 1815, when Lord Byron married, he commented that
his three week honeymoon, which he called ‘treaclemoon’, was not all sunshine,
that, in fact, it had its clouds.
More
often than most people realise, the honeymoon starts with either one or both
partners not talking to each other! Just as many honeymoons begin with either
one or both partners sulking, more often than not that bedroom activity which
everyone talks about, not only doesn’t generate any fireworks, it doesn’t even
happen. Again, lack of forethought leads to a situation that one partner or
possibly both, will look back at with regret.
Why
is it so? Why is the wedding so memorable while the honeymoon quite often
isn’t?
The
wedding day is as special as it is because on that day people, who normally run
around in shorts and tee shirts, suddenly go formal. People who don’t know
their right foot from their left suddenly take dancing lessons. People who have
heart palpitations at the thought of public speaking become members of Toast
Masters in order to make that all important wedding speech. In short, on that
day, people turn themselves inside out to play their part in the most pleasing,
elegant and dramatic way they’re capable of.
They
don’t merely hope that everything will turn out right. They make sure of it.
How
can you make sure that your honeymoon exudes the same type of drama?
If
you look back to the beginning of your relationship you’ll probably remember
that your life, at that stage, was one, long high. Over the years, though, you
may have fallen into the trap waiting for all couples, especially those in a
long term relationship, becoming so comfortable with each other you no longer
feel the need to show your real feelings towards your partner. After all, by
now your partner should be fully aware of your feelings, without any special
efforts on your part. You’ve been a couple for a long time. You might be one of
those couples who’ve lived with each other for years. It could be that by now
you’ve brought up several children together.
Where
once it was an endless stream of chocolates and roses and hours of passionate
sex, it’s now comfortable, and possibly boring routine of paying the bills and
looking after the kids.
All
that dressing up for a date, or even going out for a date, treating each other
with special courtesy and consideration, sending flowers, selecting a special
place to celebrate a birthday or anniversary, you’re way beyond that.
If
this is the kind of attitude the couple takes to their honeymoon then they can
only expect to be disappointed. Whether this is your first marriage or your
fourth, to make your honeymoon truly memorable you need to start planning for
it in the same organised, systematic way as you’re planning your wedding day.
Only in that way will it be inevitably as memorable as you expect your wedding
day to be.
More
than 60% of the newlyweds choose a honeymoon in a foreign country hoping to
taste something unique and different. Yet, in the majority of cases, it will be
little more than a holiday like every other holiday they have ever had, except
a great deal more expensive.
But
it can be different. It can be more than just a vacation. Instead of
concentrating your attention merely on the choice of the location, make your
honeymoon a time when you show your partner the person he or she fell in love
with in the first place. A you at your very best. Use your honeymoon to
re-ignite that old relationship to the way it used to be when you first met
each other, and you were each other’s best friend, as well as each other’s
dream lover.
Whether
you’re 18 or 80, whether you’re spending a leisurely month or just a quick
week-end, make your honeymoon a time to remember for the rest of your life by
preparing for it as carefully as you’re planning your wedding day.
