honeymoon

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Cash Wedding Registries with Deposit a Gift

January 24, 2012 in Under The Spotlight | 5 comments

Earlier this month I went to lunch with one of my best and oldest friends, Katie. We’ve known each other for years, ever since we started skipping Sunday School together! Anyway, this lunch was extra special (and it wasn’t just because we went to Wagamamas) because she told me she was getting married…in March! Yes in under 3 months time!

Anyway one of the first things we got talking about (after the dress of course) was the wedding gift registry. She told me they’d decided to go for the cash registry option and wanted to know if I thought it was ‘tacky’ to ask for money over gifts. They already live together, but they want to have the honeymoon of their lives. So, instead of asking for toasters, dinnerwear and cushions, they’re asking people to contribute as much as they feel comfortable with towards their dream trip. They’ve added small things from as little as £5.50 for a favourite cocktail, all the way to a few hundred pounds for flights. I thought it was a great idea! Who needs another throw cushion anyway!?

So for this reason, I’m thrilled to introduce you to Deposit a Gift today. Deposit a Gift offers just the service Katie is after. Founder Dana Ostomel says,

“Deposit a Gift gives engaged couples what they want most: Flexibility. Our cash wedding registry lets friends and family contribute monetary gifts towards the dreams and experiences they actually want, not ‘stuff’ they don’t. It’s incredibly user friendly, and offers a great alternative to traditional registries. Simply put, it’s a less crass way of asking for cash.”

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Tags: gift list, gift registry, honeymoon

Under the Spotlight – Honeymoon Ideas from Mahlatini

July 5, 2011 in Under The Spotlight | 1 comment

Having trouble deciding where to go on your honeymoon? Maybe you fancy laying on the beach in the Maldives but your husband-to-be wants to safari it around Kenya? Well Mahlatini are here to help. Their flexible and eclectic honeymoon options are perfect for people that want something different.

Mahlatini offer a range of holiday and honeymoon choices. Their ‘twin centre’ honeymoon packages specialise in holidays with two or locations included.

“These holidays are growing in popularity and Africa in particular lends itself to providing a diversity of experiences in one trip,” they explain, “Honeymooners in particular are drawn to twin centre safari and beach honeymoons which combine an action packed safari or city break with perhaps a week spent on a nearby beach to relax and soak up the sun. Twin Centre Holidays also suit families because parents can add to the yearly beach holiday with an educational and fun cultural and wildlife experience.”

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Tags: honeymoon, Under The Spotlight

Alice in Weddingland – The Honeymoon & The Gift List

May 2, 2011 in Guest Posts | 8 comments

So this month is my penultimate column for Rock n Roll Bride, and I wont lie, that makes me very sad indeed! However, I feel I have at least a couple more words of wisdom for you all, as my wedding planning journey has been far from smooth sailing. If the problems I have encountered can in some way help you guys in your planning, then in my eyes it will all have been worth it! So this month I am going to write about two topics, one quite ‘normal’ topic, and another fairly controversial one. I welcome to you to a dual-issue article; honeymoon’s and the problems of gift lists.

Photography Credit: Impress Photos

When it came to organising our honeymoon I felt an enormous amount of pressure to conform to the typical beach-side retreat honeymoon. In all the bridal magazines every month they feature an idyllic island where you can lay by the crystal clear waters for two weeks, being waited on by your own personal butler. Now this all sounds very lovely, but for me there were two problems…firstly, Graham and I are very active and we physically couldn’t lay still for two weeks. Secondly, the £6000 price tag was absolutely horrifying, and beyond unrealistic. So we began to realise that we were going to have to think outside of the box on this one, and find a holiday solution that not only suited our personalities but fit in our budget of £2000.

Initially I was really interested in the option of a dual-city honeymoon, something along the lines of Paris and Monaco, New York and Las Vegas, that kind of thing. They cost only a little bit more then staying in one place for the entire duration of your honeymoon, as the only extra supplement you pay is for the internal travel to the second destination. This is a really good way to explore a new country and add a sense of adventure to your honeymoon! However I was soon to find out that Graham had a particular place in mind for our honeymoon, a place that he had been dreaming of going to since a little child…

Photography Credit: Joe Penniston via The Honeymoon Project

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Tags: Alice in Weddingland, budget wedding, honeymoon, uk wedding blog, Vendors

Lisa & Alex’s San Francisco Honeymoon Shoot

April 27, 2011 in British Brides, Wedding Day/Day After Shoot | 14 comments

Photographer Lisa Jane shot the photo booth at the Rock n Roll Bride party so I’ve been chatting to he online for quite a while ago. Lisa married Alex in Vegas in March (and yes I will be blogging their wedding report and photographs by the fabulous Steep Street Photography soon I promise!) and they went to San Francisco for their Honeymoon.

“Alex and I have been together nearly 14 years and when we decided to have our honeymoon in San Francisco, it was like a dream come true,” Lisa told me. “We have talked about San Francisco for years and we where both so excited to explore the city. When I started to think about our holiday, I realised we would come away with a million photographs of San Francisco and Alex but none of the two of us together and I started to get upset. It was to be our wedding and honeymoon of our dreams but there would be no photos of us to show how much fun we had together…so the search began to find a photographer who could capture us on our honeymoon. Thanks to a recommendation from another photographer, we stumbled across Nirav and when we looked at his work together, Alex and I where smitten (the only other time this has happened with a photographer was with our wedding photographer.) What also sweetened the deal, was then when we started emailing Nirav, we discovered we all loved the same music and it felt like we where old friends when we finally met.”

“The day itself was so much fun. We had lunch chatting about music and photography then the shooting began. Nirav made us feel so comfortable and we where so wrapped up in each other and enjoying the ‘we just got married feeling’ the shoot itself just flew by. We nick named Nirav ‘the ninja’ as one moment he would be right in front of us and the next minute he had vanished and was taking photos from a completely different angle. We lost site of him a few times and suddenly he would be right behind us, snapping away. When we got the photos through, I cried. It brought back all the memories from out honeymoon and he captured us perfectly. These photos are a true representation of us as a couple, silly, always making each other laugh, best friends and hopelessly in love. Also note, I am wearing my wedding and engagement ring on the wrong hand as we had both got tattooed a few days before and one of my tattoos was a heart on my ring finger! It was still swollen on the day so I couldn’t wear my rings on the correct hand.”

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Tags: checked shirts, honeymoon, red hair, Tattooed, Tattooed Bride

Honeymoon Help – Helping you Plan a USA Road Trip!

February 5, 2011 in Guest Posts | 9 comments

Photography Credit: David McNeil

Hello Kat,

Hope you are keeping well!!! I see you have been very busy and it’s not even Feb yet!!!!!
I have to thank you again for blogging the wedding. We’ve been married now for 5 months but I still go to your blog religiously everyday! David has also been amazing and used one of my pics for the link to his website which just makes me grin like a cheshire cat!!!!!! (You can she Shalma & Leo’s wedding here!)

We’re planning our honeymoon at the moment. We decided not to do the honeymoon straight after the wedding for a number of reasons, money, timing and I didn’t want to peek too much in all the excitement and have nothing to look forward to.

Have you got any tips on all things honeymooney? How to get the best deals, where to go, how to get upgraded rooms and flights!!!! Any wisdom of yours will be greatly appreciated!!!!

Shalma

I love to get emails from you, my darling readers. Although I get a lot (and I mean a lot!) of messages everyday I do try my hardest to reply and help out everyone that takes the time to email me. However, as I’ve said many times before, I’m certainly not an expert in all aspects of wedding day planning (after all, I’ve only done it once myself!) yet what I do have is a crack team of experts on hand to help out and guest write their little asses off to help you.

For Shalma’s dilemma I called upon the expertise of the fabulous Emma Gibbs of The Honeymoon Project.

♥ ♥ ♥

Ah, upgrades, that all-important honeymoon question! The key to getting upgrades is to tell absolutely everyone that it’s your honeymoon – so if you email a hotel or make a reservation, add a note saying “this is for our honeymoon”, and drop it into conversation every time you check in. Hotel upgrades are pretty standard for honeymooners – we arranged our honeymoon independently and were upgraded everywhere we stayed. Unfortunately, bagging a flight upgrade isn’t quite so easy. If you book your tickets through an agent then do let them know it’s your honeymoon and they will probably add a note to your booking, which might help. Otherwise, it’s really a case of letting the check-in staff know (but they will hear it a lot, so may not play ball); dressing relatively smartly and having a frequent flyer card can also help. Failing that, most airlines will let you pre-book a bottle of champagne to enjoy when you get on board, so you can always do that just to make the economy experience feel a little bit swankier.

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco by Alain Picard

September is a fantastic time to hit America’s West Coast – though the weather in San Fran is notoriously fickle so remember to pack a jumper or two just in case. The main thing is to decide is where to fly in and out of – you can then get an open-jaw ticket so that you don’t have to double back on yourselves. Shop around online for the best deals, and it’s also worth checking with travel agents like Trailfinders as they might be able to offer a good combined price for your flights and initial hotel stay.

Napa Valley by Mark Leary