how I planned our honeymoon

I recently asked you guys what you wanted to know about our honeymoon, where we went, if you had any questions on what we did or where we stayed, and the most commonly asked question was how I planned the whole thing on my own; so I figured I’d address that right away.

I kind of hate this question for one reason, I really don’t have an answer. Elaborate for me, do you want to know how I knew what to do and where to go? My thought process? My research? How I could afford to plan it? All of it? The question is so vague, I don’t really know, so I’ll lay it all out on the table for you.

I feel like being that I’m so young and that I don’t have a glamours job there are people who want to know how I can afford it, let’s be honest when I see people take vacations I wonder that too. I share most of my thrifty travel tips in my world travel—on a budget blog post, but I’ll touch base on a few of them specific to this trip here too.

AirBnb will be your best friend. So many people ask me if it’s trustworthy, yes it is! But you have to be smart about it, read the reviews, all of them. The good ones and the one star reviews and be smart about it when you read them. If they rave about the area and how friendly the host was, that’s good, if they aren’t happy with the area because of safety issues that’s not so good. If the area is far from popular places that’s normal for the price, if you want to be closer chances are the price will be higher so be mindful of that. We used AirBnb for everywhere we stayed (aside from the Dromoland Castle) and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love AirBnb.

Norwegian and Southwest Airlines, we flew Southwest to Rhode Island where we changed flights to Norwegian and flew to Ireland. Norwegian flies super cheap to Europe and Southwest has so many crazy sales and deals for flying around the US plus two bags fly free, so it’s a win win.

So there’s my secrets to being able to afford it.

Planning where we wanted to go was half easy, we always knew we wanted to go to Ireland so we picked that, then we decided we wanted to take some time to just relax after our Irish adventure so we chose Italy. For planning where in Ireland we wanted to go I just used Pinterest! The most gorgeous places, the places you can’t miss, “top 10 things in Ireland,” etc. If we’re being completely honest, that’s the only research that I did! If I saw something I liked, I added it to our trip. I didn’t over think it and if there was anything I could book online I booked it. I didn’t overthink, whatever happens happens.

Dylan and I rented a car for getting around Ireland and if you follow me on Snapchat or Instagram you know that I didn’t do quite enough research on Ireland for driving… turns out they drive on the opposite side of the road BUT in my defense when I googled it it said that any UK countries and Australia drive on the opposite side, we weren’t going to Northern Ireland so I didn’t think anything of it… oops, my bad. Just made the adventure even more fun! Dylan actually had a lot of fun doing everything backwards.

For Italy, we actually had a recommendation to go to the Amalfi Coast from the photographer who photographed our engagement (Ian Holmes Photography, he’s amazing). So I rolled with that and hit up AirBnb… in all honesty neither of us had ever even heard of the Amalfi Coast until he recommended it, so we really had no idea what we wanted to do and that was my favorite part about the whole thing. We just mindlessly wandered around for days, coming across hidden shops and pretty views. No rush, nothing we had to do, it was great.

I feel really useless when it comes to this question so here’s my biggest piece of advice: don’t over think it and Pinterest is honestly going to be your best friend. Pick a place you’ve always dreamed of going and go. Once you start booking your flights and where you’re going to stay things will start falling into place. Just because you’re in a different country doesn’t mean everything will go wrong. Prime example here: we had no idea how we were going to get from Amalfi to Rome and I couldn’t find ANYTHING on google, no trains, no public transportation, it was like the only option was to drive. So I did nothing. I decided we would figure it out when we got there and Dylan was cool with that. When we landed I hit up our AirBnb host in Rome and she told us how to get there, it was easy and I knew it would work out.

Do not stress. Relax and have faith that it’ll work out. If you start freaking out or get worked up your trip will suffer. Have a positive attitude, you’re somewhere new! Enjoy it.

I hope something in this helped you and if you have more questions let me know and I’ll modify this post and address them here!