How To Spend Your Honeymoon in Italy
This site uses affiliate links, meaning that if you make a purchase through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission at no additional cost to you.
There are three things NOBODY wants to experience on their honeymoon in Italy:
Feeling like you wasted your time because you didn’t have anything organized in advance
Being too exhausted to do anything other than lay down in your hotel room and take a nap
Missing out on the romance and celebration because you’re spending too much time trying to figure out how to use the public transport, waiting in line to see the Vatican, or anything else that is wasting time in your itinerary.
Good news, though - I have been planning honeymoons to Italy for five years, and I’m going to share my best strategies with you in this blog post to maximize the romance and happiness, and minimize or ELIMINATE the stressy and overwhelm.
Why? Because I believe that you deserve to ENJOY being engaged and to enjoy your honeymoon!
Let’s dive in.
Plan your transport in advance
ESPECIALLY for first time visitors, ESPECIALLY if you’re taking an overnight flight to Italy, ESPECIALLY if you have luggage.
Everyone wants their honeymoon to be easy, but so many honeymooners miss out on an easy opportunity to set themselves up for success. If you could walk out of the airport after clearing customs and grabbing your luggage to find your personal private driver waiting for you to load up your luggage and take you directly to your hotel, you would be stoked, right?
Rather than landing, clearing customs, waiting for bags, dragging them through the airport while you try to figure out how to connect your phone to the internet so you can Google how to get from Rome FCO airport to Rome city center, along with the time tables and also you’re pretty hungry so do we have time to stop for food?
Let’s just make it easy. I recommend having transport pre-arranged for the following scenarios:
Airport arrival to your first hotel
Any intercity travel (private driver from your hotel to the train station, train tickets booked in advance, train station pickup)
Day trips and tours to the countryside with specific points of interest
From your last hotel to the airport for your departure flight
Book skip the line tickets - yes, they are worth it.
Even having a general admission ticket paid for ahead of time is not enough. You’re going to be standing in line, in the weather, for hours. Find a reputable vendor and book the skip the line tickets!
Try to avoid the busiest seasons if you can
Italy is typically slammed over the summer when the weather is sunny and hot, and also over the major Christian religious holidays. HOWEVER, I was just there in September and October (2023) and the crowds were huge. Lots of people means everything is going to move more slowly, so if possible try for early spring or later fall if you want to avoid the rush of tourists.
Build down-time into your schedule every day
If you have every second of your honeymoon booked, you’re inevitably going to wind up feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, and in need of a nap.
Having down time built in will give you a much needed break each day to recover as needed, wander and explore a bit, and stumble across things you would’ve never found otherwise!
Study Italian before you go
Especially in more rural areas or smaller towns, you will come across Italians that do not speak English. Being prepared to chat with locals in their language will go a long way toward making your Italian honeymoon as lovely as possible! I really love using Babbel to prep for my trips.
Book hotels with breakfast included rates
If you’re someone that needs a good breakfast to start the day and avoid getting hangry, you should be prioritizing the breakfast included hotel experience. If you look, you should be able to find breakfast out at restaurants, but it will cost you more and be less extensive than what you will find in a good hotel. However, if you’re good with a coffee and a pastry to the start the day, you won’t need to opt for this!
Commit to spending three nights in each city, minimum
This is a soapbox for me. Any less than three nights in a city in Italy will always leave you feeling that you didn’t get the full experience - because you didn’t. To be fair, you could spend YEARS in cities across Italy and still find new things every day, but for the sake of your honeymoon I’m only going to give you a three nigh minimum.
If you consider it, I think you’ll see my point. Let’s use Rome for example.
With only one night in Rome, you are getting less than 24 hours to experience the eternal city.
With just two nights, you are only giving yourself ONE FULL DAY.
With three nights, you have two full days - again, this is the bare minimum I recommend.
I wish you an AMAZING engagement season, your dream come true wedding day, and a honeymoon that’s full of love, celebration, and joyful experiences. For those fiancés looking for help planning your Italian honeymoon, I am currently accepting new travel cliens! Click the link below to get started.
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! By off-loading the work of designing your next vacation, you get to more time to spend enjoying the people and things you love.
