How to Plan the Best Italian Honeymoon - Steal the 5 Step Process I Use to Plan Italian Honeymoons for My Clients!
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IMO, there is a right way to plan an Italian honeymoon - and a million wrong ways.
Now before you come for me, I’m NOT saying that there’s a perfect itinerary or that everyone has to go to the same places - I’m saying that the strategies I use take your Italian honeymoon from feeling like ‘just a trip to Italy’ and transform it into the DREAM honeymoon experience you’re looking for!
Celebrating the start of your life together as newlyweds in Italy doesn’t have to feel overwhelming and stressful. I feel so strongly about this that I’m sharing the exact systems and strategies I use to design Italian honeymoons with you. I want you to use them!
Hmmmm…. That’s weird, right? Why would someone that designs honeymoons to Italy for a living be sharing this information freely at NO COST?
Here’s why - I passionately believe that traveling makes the world a better place by making each individual person a better human. When we intentionally leave our comfort zone to experience new places, culture, language, food, and people, we find opportunities to extend compassion, to humble ourselves, and to adapt and become more flexible.
By sharing this information with you, I hope to empower you to travel as a guest instead of a tourist, and that we can take one step closer to making the world a better place together.
FIRST - Sit down with your partner and identify THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT of your Italian honeymoon
This might be a specific date range, an event you really want to experience, a certain city or cities that must bein the itinerary, or overall cost.
Whatever that most important aspect is will then drive the rest of your honeymoon planning. You can keep coming back to this most important aspect as a sort of cornerstone when making decisions about the rest of your honeymoon! I love an easy decision, and establishing your most important aspect will really help to make the majority of your decisions easy, instead of feeling like you have a million big decisions to figure out.
NEXT - Nail down the BIG itinerary logistics and get them booked
The big itinerary logistics I’m talking about include your flights (PLEASE upgrade your seats for your flight to Europe and make sure you do everything you need to do to sleep on the flight! You can read more about my strong opinions on this topic in this blog post), your transportation between cities, your rental car (if applicable), private transfers from the airport to your hotel, hotels in each city, and any other transportation or accommodation component on your checklist.
I like to work together with supplier in my network that can help me coordinate everything into one package price so my clients can book all of these components with a deposit, rather than having to pay everything in full at the time of booking in a more a la carte style.
Having this outline DONE and arranged is a huge weight off - even if you made no other plans, your honeymoon is BOOKED. It’s happening, and you’re going to Italy!
THIRD - Let’s build in those MUST DO activities!
Now that you know where you’re going and how long you’re going to be there, it’s MUCH simpler to coordinate how you’ll spend your time in each place. I have a LOT of advice on this topic, which I’ll outline below:
Invest in skip the line tickets where offered for sites you really want to see! The lines for the Vatican and Colosseum in Rome, for example, can be DAYS LONG. I’m going to assume you don’t want to spend that kind of time waiting in line on your honeymoon
Try and join a walking food tour of the cities you’re in! It’s a really unique way to truly experience a city, instead of taking the same photos of the same monuments that everyone else does
Find a local photographer to capture honeymoon photos for you! I have recommendations I’m happy to share. Reach out to me via email: erin@freshwtc.com
If you are particularly passionate about a museum, site, monument, or city, consider investing in a private or small group tour. I NEVER book my clients in those huge tour groups that hand out earpieces and rush you through everywhere because I find this very inauthentic. Additionally, these experiences usually leave travelers feeling like they missed a lot, or worse - that the city or site wasn’t actually all that great.
PLEASE do not have yourself scheduled every moment of every day! Not only will you need some downtime to rest here and there, but there are so many beautiful places to explore in Italy that you’ll be doing yourself a disservice by not allowing time and space to get lost and wander.
I usually like to build in activities for my clients along with their logistics in the same package so that EVERYTHING can be booked with one deposit because my travelers love the ease of this system.
NEXT - let’s focus on education
There is a major difference between traveling as a tourist and traveling as a guest. Traveling as a tourist robs you of authentic, immersive connections with your destination and prevents you from experiencing a destination fully. I want to ensure you travel to Italy for your honeymoon as a guest. Intentionally traveling this way empowers you to dive deeper into every aspect of your trip and to come away from it with real memories, new realizations about yourself, and likely a new friend or two.
The education I encourage my travelers to focus on includes language learning, expectations for Italian meals, hotels, people, transport, and more, and cultural norms to be aware of. I also provide and share a lot of resources along these topics so my travelers don’t feel lost or like there’s another thing to add to their to-do lists.
I know this is the fourth thing on my list of strategies and systems for planning the best Italian honeymoon, but I really want the education aspect to start as soon as you know you’re going to Italy for your honeymoon. If you can’t start at that exact moment, that’s okay! Let’s shoot for ASAP.
FINALLY - create a balance of preparedness and flexibility
Your honeymoon itinerary is complete - your flights are booked, you know how you’re getting from place to place, you have your hotels lined up, all the things you want to do are scheduled, you’ve got a list of restaurants to try, and you’ve been practicing your Italian.
There’s just one more thing I want you to do before you take off (besides your wedding, of course!).
Well, it’s actually a two part thing.
PART ONE: Sit down with your honeymoon and your partner, and make sure that you feel as prepared as possible. Consider any outstanding questions or concerns, and figure out what information you need to feel like you’ve got it under control.
For my travelers, this means reviewing their itinerary, flight confirmations, travel documents, travel insurance policy information, 24/7 emergency contact information, and any other travel resources they will need on their traveler webpage I’ve created for them. My clients LOVE THIS because everything they need is one easy to access place, and they can even save this webpage to their phone home screen like an app.
The goal is for you to feel confident, prepared, and excited.
PART TWO: Empower yourself to be flexible. Understand that things happen when we’re traveling, and it’s incredibly rare for everything to go exactly according to plan. Weather, strikes, mechanical issues, and other people can all impact our trips. The more you can stay flexible and roll with situations that may come up on your Italian honeymoon, the more energy you’ll be able to devote to ensuring you continue to have the best Italian honeymoon possible.
And now, you’re ready.
The best Italian honeymoon is waiting for you. It’s special, it’s unique, and it’s going to take some elbow grease to get it just right.
If you sit down and decide that part of the system for your perfect Italian honeymoon is to bring in a professional travel designer, I would love to hear from you. You can fill out the form below with all the details you have so far and we’ll connect from there about working together!
I’m SO happy for you. I wish you a lifetime of love, laughter, and happiness together!
I’m Erin, your new travel bestie. Based in Michigan with plans to see the entire globe, I am passionate about empowering my travel clients to create and experience your very best adventure. After studying abroad in Rome during college, marrying the love of my life in 2020 (COVID wedding!), and becoming a mom, I know that we all want to spend less time stressing on the internet and more time enjoying the people we love. Let me help you achieve this by taking on the work of designing your next vacation for you, so you can spend that time enjoying your people instead.
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