Honeymoon Planning: Love Shack, Baby Love Shack!

Since we couldn't go back to Mexico for our honeymoon right after the wedding because it's the wrong time of year, we used a very scientific method for determining our destination. Ha! No, really all we did was say to ourselves, "Where can we go that will be sunny, warm, not too expensive, and not too long of a flight?"

For the past 10 years or so, I'd always dreamed of going to Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas for a honeymoon, but it didn't meet the criteria of not being too expensive or too long of a flight from California. Le sigh!


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Next, we started thinking about Fiji or Tahiti...but the dreamy above-water accommodations were WAY pricey, and a 7-8 hour flight was a bit on the long side, considering we'll be leaving the Monday after the wedding and be exhausted.


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So the only other alternative we could think of that met the criteria was Hawaii, with a 5 hour flight from San Francisco. Now, I've always wanted to go to Hawaii, but at first I just wasn't that excited about it for our honeymoon. I had just always pictured some place more exotic/special/unique/romantic for some reason. But then, Trip Advisor came to my rescue! After Weddingbee, it's probably my favorite website, the forums there are great, and I was able to describe what we were looking for, and tons of people responded with great suggestions.

So now we have a honeymoon destination: the island of Kauai. It is the least developed and crowded of all the islands, so hopefully we'll be able to capture a bit of the feeling from when we visited Majahuitas Resort on the private cove in Mexico. And to further that goal of seclusion, we decided to rent a private house on the beach!

Enter the Kauai Love Shack! After about a month of research, it was the only 1 bedroom house directly on beach of the north shore I could find, so we booked it (we didn't want to pay thousands more for a bigger house, why waste money when we only need one bedroom?).

And without further ado, here is what we'll get to enjoy for one whole week after our wedding!


{All Kauai Love Shack images from the Vrbo listing}

Now for the price tag, which was at least $2k less than all the other houses we looked at:

$45.00 - Reservation Fee

$1000.00 - Security Deposit

$3141.95 - Total Rent including 11.4166% Tax

$200.00 - Cleaning Fee

$4386.95 - Total

We've already put down half of that, and the rest is due in March. We can't wait! The only downside is since we won't be at a hotel, we will have to do some cooking ourselves. But I'm thinking we'll stock up on sandwich and salad fixings to make our own lunches, and just drive the 4 miles into the town of Hanalei for dinners. Or we can also take a romantic walk down the beach about 300 yards to a small resort that has an on-site restaurant.

How did you pick your honeymoon location? And will you be going right after your wedding?