Your honeymoon is one of the major wedding expenses. There are many options available today to make your honeymoon cost effective and romantic at the same time. The following are some affordable ideas for a romantic honeymoon.

Gift of a honeymoon
Listing yourself at a honeymoon gift registry could reduce or offset the cost of honeymoon entirely. It works similar to a wedding registry. Your guests could buy you an entire honeymoon, or buy parts of it for you like a dinner or sponsor a part of your flight, or simply contribute money towards your honeymoon. There are a lot of honeymoon registries are available online.

Home exchange
On a honeymoon, you would rather be with locals rather than in tourists, then why not look for a home exchange. Home exchange works with you staying in some one else’s house and they stay at your house. It might sound a little risky; many home exchange clubs have facilitated thousands of home exchanges over the past 5 decades. There are many couples who would like to swap places with you. Home exchange clubs are work through memberships and they are pretty cheap at approximately £30-40 per year. Home exchange can save a lot in travel and lodging costs, while allowing you to know the local culture better and make new friends.

Hospitality Clubs
Hospitality clubs work by getting you into private homes of people who would like to host you. Membership to these clubs is free and works on an exchange basis. Someone might host you today, in return for which you may have to host someone voluntarily in the future. This not only saves money, but also gives you a local window to information and secure stay. The largest hospitality club boasts of about 25,000 members in 150 countries. can hook you up with people who are willing to host you in their private homes; the largest such club has more than 23,000 members in 148 countries. Membership is usually free, although you’re asked to provide hospitality to others (on a voluntary basis) sometime in the future. In addition to saving you money, it’s a great way to meet locals who can give you an insider’s perspective on your honeymoon destination. Other places you can look for free or reduced-cost accommodations include hostels (they’re not just for the young and single anymore) and monasteries and convents, some of which open their doors to guests for little or no charge.

Camping
Camping can be a great way having a romantic honeymoon under the stars and right by fires, saving money at the same time. Camping is very inexpensive, maximum of £20 at most places, cheaper if you can cook. Take proper clothing, sleeping bags, waterproof tents and mattress pads etc to make it more comfortable. Many national parks provide cabins to stay and are very affordable. You could mix up a few camping nights with hotel nights to make the whole honeymoon romantic and affordable.

Off season travel
Choose destinations that are offering off season pricing and coincide with your honeymoon. For example, hill stations in winter and sea sides in summer offer off season discounts up to 50% off the normal price. Off season in hill station winters may not be appealing but sea sides in summers certainly is. Off season does not mean enduring bad weather, it means going to a place where the tourist rush is lesser in a given period of time, all the more appealing for honeymooners.

Budget travel
Check the travel brochures for promotional deals that offer heavy discounts on travel and lodging. A lot of them have websites on the internet and are worth watching out for. Sign up for free newsletters with the sites; they will keep you abreast of their latest offers.

Plan Yourself
The last but not the least important is to plan your honeymoon trip professionally including budgets, hotels, travel arrangements and dates. We don’t want to end up spending the night in the airport for lack of planning. Do we?

Author: Rob Wilson