So, we're getting married next May. Despite small setbacks such as our florist dropping us, the plans are coming along well. By the way, we reached out to some friends and were referred to a florist who is going to be fabulous, and within budget.
The next thing on my list is planning the Honeymoon. We're going big on this. We are planning to spend two weeks in Italy and Greece. Neither of us have ever been to Europe, so we didn't want to overwhelm ourselves with hopping around to Spain, France, etc. We picked the two countries that we wanted to see the most.
Thanks to my massive accumulation of Hilton Honors points, we will have our hotel stays almost entirely covered. We're actually up to about 330,000 points. The gorgeous four star quality hotels in Italy and Greece go for either 35,000 or 40,000 points per night. I'm going to continue to use my Hilton Honors American Express card for most of our wedding expenses, so that total should get close to 400,000 points by the time the wedding rolls around.
Our problem is the flights. I did a cursory search for airline prices for that time of year, and it looks like about $1,100 per person on the lower end. Ouch! Unfortunately, unlike Hilton points, I do not have any significant accumulation of any major airline miles.
If anyone has any tips or advice to help us keep our honeymoon costs down, it would be much appreciated. I know the obvious answer is to scale our plans down. Fewer nights, cheaper location. especially with the current Dollar/Euro rate, it's going to get costly.
I think you are doing it right by planning this vacation now. I don't think the currency loss is over so longer term it will be even more expensive.
You could try and see if you could find a home exchange as well, http://www.homeexchange.com/.
Posted by: deborah | November 18, 2007 at 10:55 AM
Unfortunately, airfare to Italy and Greece is going to be that expensive, especially during the summer months. One suggestion I might add for you is to look into flying to Rome, traveling through Italy (Rome -> Florence / Tuscany -> Venice) and then taking a ferry from Venice to Greece (they are a bunch - I've been on the one from Venice to Corfu). All the islands in Greece are then connected by boats/ferrys. You could then maybe get a one-way to London or Paris from Athens and see about another one way back to the states from those airports, which are generally cheaper.
Posted by: Amanda | November 19, 2007 at 10:57 AM
Planning ahead is huge. You might also expand your flight plan a little bit to try to lead to some savings! For example, I am currently planning a trip to Croatia (~$900 RT). Ouch. Then I found that if I fly into Munich ($353 RT) and rent a car through sixtusa.com for the ten days of my travels ($270 including insurance), I will save myself a nice little chunk of change - plus I will have a car during my trip! It's worth a peek, anyway... good luck!
Jerry
www.leads4insurance.com
Posted by: Jerry | December 05, 2007 at 04:31 PM
You might also try flying into Frankfurt, Paris, or London (depending on flight prices) and then taking one of the discount airlines like RyanAir (which often has $30-40 flights) on to Italy.
Posted by: Cam | December 21, 2007 at 04:20 AM
If you haven't gotten your tickets already look on http://www.airfarewatchdog.com/
Check out their International Fares link - you might find somthing cheap out of different hubs that you haven't thought of.
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