When it comes to your honeymoon, the best way to approach planning is to do what makes you happiest!

If you want to worry as little as possible, book an all-inclusive or find someone who will plan much of the trip for you.

But if you’re a lover of trip planning, like myself, here’s how to make sure you plan yourself the most epic honeymoon you can!

Decide on a Destination

Before you can plan anything, you and your partner should sit down and agree on a destination for your post-nuptials trip.

Do you want to visit somewhere warm and tropical? Do you want to go to a romantic hot spot destination? Is there somewhere you both want to go, and would love to take this opportunity?

Brandon and I had landed on Amsterdam as our primary destination, since we both love a cute city with beautiful walks and delicious food. We ended up adding Paris to the trip, upon discovering that we could get there on a 3-hour train ride. Paris is an iconic honeymoon destination, of course, and we wanted to visit the Catacombs. So it just made sense for us.

Once you’ve landed on where you both want to go, you can start the fun part!

Brainstorm What you Want to Do

What do you want to do or see at your destination? What sights do you want to visit? What restaurants would you want to try?

Make a list of your ideal stops on your trip and if you’re like me, you may want to plot them on a Google Map. That way, you can get a visual. If everything you want to do is close to one neighbourhood, that’s probably where you want to get a hotel!

We made a list together of all of the activities, restaurants and sights we wanted to visit on our trip, and then pinned them on a map. This was super helpful in narrowing down where we wanted to stay.

Book your Travel and Stays

Now you know where you want to go, and hopefully when you want to go. It’s time to start booking! Take a look at your booking platform of choice and compare prices for deals.

Flights, hotels, any internal travel once you’ve arrived – add these items as the bare bones of your itinerary. Now you know where you absolutely have to be and when.

The rest of the time is yours to fill however you’d like!

Build an Itinerary

Once you’ve got the bones of your trip in place – flights, hotel and travel to your destinations – you want to put together a schedule for the rest of your trip.

Pull out that list of things you brainstormed earlier, and think about when you want to do each of those things. Then organize it into a schedule. I use a simple Word doc, but you can use a spreadsheet, calendar, whatever works for you!

And it doesn’t have to be minute by minute. But if the restaurant you really want to go to is only open on weekends, that’s something that needs to be considered!

I find that putting those non-negotiables into the schedule will help everything else fall into place. If one day you want to do a strenuous hike, you may want to make sure the next day has a little bit more downtime to rest your legs.

You’ll have a loose itinerary before you know it!

Make any Reservations and Book Tickets

Now that you know when you want to visit certain museums and where you want to eat some of your meals, it’s time to book those pieces!

Buy any tickets ahead of time for popular museums or tourist sights, book reservations for those super popular restaurants. You don’t want to get excited about going to a specific place on your trip and then realize you can’t get in.

Not everything needs to be booked ahead of time, but if you’re a planner like me, it doesn’t hurt to give yourself some peace of mind and just get everything settled before you even get to the airport.