Rebecca Engel
A honeymoon is the one trip most couples plan around a feeling rather than a checklist. The trouble is that the internet’s idea of a honeymoon tends to start at overwater bungalows and climb from there, which leaves out most of the people who have just finished paying for a wedding.
These 21 honeymoon destinations run from places you can do on an ordinary vacation budget to the ones worth emptying the savings account for. Each one carries a rough cost for a week on the ground for two people, not counting flights, so you can see where it sits before you fall for it. Those numbers move around a lot by season and by how you like to travel, so treat them as a starting point rather than a quote.
1. St Lucia
Rough budget: $5,000 to $9,000
St Lucia has been the Caribbean’s honeymoon island for decades, and the reason is standing right there in every photo. The Pitons are two volcanic spires rising straight out of the sea, and the resorts on that stretch of coast are built to look at them.
What makes it work beyond the view is that the island has something to do. There’s rainforest, a drive in volcano, sulphur springs, and fishing villages, so a week doesn’t have to be spent entirely on a lounger.
It’s an expensive island, and the adults only resorts around Soufriere are where most of the cost sits. Staying on the north end near Rodney Bay cuts the bill considerably and puts you closer to restaurants that aren’t your hotel’s.
2. Madeira, Portugal
Rough budget: $1,500 to $2,500
Madeira is the cheapest genuinely romantic place on this list, and it doesn’t feel cheap once you’re there. It’s a volcanic island off the coast of Africa where the cliffs drop hundreds of feet into the Atlantic and the whole interior is walking trails through cloud forest.
The weather is the quiet selling point. It sits at around 20 degrees most of the year, so there’s no wrong season, which matters when your wedding date decides your honeymoon date for you.
Funchal has good food and better wine for a fraction of mainland European prices, and a rental car and a small hotel in the hills will still leave change from what a single night costs in the Caribbean.
3. Fiji
Rough budget: $6,000 to $12,000
Fiji is the South Pacific honeymoon that doesn’t require the Bora Bora budget, though it’s still a splurge. It’s more than 300 islands, and the ones couples end up on are small enough that the resort is the island.
The Yasawas are the classic choice, reached by a catamaran that runs up the chain each morning. Water clarity there is the kind people don’t quite believe from photos.
Fiji’s real advantage over other far flung island trips is warmth of a different sort. It’s genuinely friendly in a way that guests remember longer than the snorkelling, and the resorts are used to couples who just got married.
4. Puglia, Italy
Rough budget: $2,500 to $4,000
Puglia is the heel of Italy’s boot, and it’s what Tuscany was before everyone found it. Whitewashed towns, olive groves that run to the horizon, and two coastlines within an hour of each other.
The place to stay is a masseria, a converted fortified farmhouse, many of which are now small hotels with a pool and a kitchen doing food from the land around it. They cost a fraction of a comparable place further north.
Alberobello is the photograph everyone takes, a whole town of conical stone roofs, but the towns nobody has heard of are the better days out. Sea urchins and burrata on a harbour wall in Polignano a Mare is a decent way to start a marriage.
5. Vieques, Puerto Rico
Rough budget: $2,000 to $3,000
Vieques is a small island off Puerto Rico’s east coast, and for an American couple it’s the cheapest way to get a real Caribbean honeymoon. No passport, no currency to change, and domestic flights.
Half the island was a naval bombing range until 2003, which sounds unromantic and had an odd side effect. It kept the developers out, so the beaches are empty in a way that almost nowhere else in the Caribbean manages.
The thing to plan around is the bioluminescent bay. Mosquito Bay glows brighter than any other in the world when you paddle through it, and it’s best on a dark night, so check the moon before you book the dates.
6. The Lofoten Islands, Norway
Rough budget: $3,500 to $5,500
Lofoten is for couples who find the idea of a beach honeymoon slightly boring. It’s a chain of islands above the Arctic Circle where sharp black mountains come straight out of the water and red fishermen’s cabins sit on stilts at the edge of it.
You can stay in those cabins, which are called rorbuer and have been converted into some of the more atmospheric lodging in Europe. Sitting in one with the heat on while the weather does something dramatic outside is the whole appeal.
Time of year changes the trip completely. Summer brings a sun that never sets, so you can hike at midnight. Winter brings the northern lights and about three hours of daylight. Both are good honeymoons and they’re nothing alike.
7. The Riviera Maya, Mexico
Rough budget: $1,800 to $3,000
The Riviera Maya is where a lot of couples land when the budget is real and the vacation days are few, and it earns the spot. It’s a short flight from most of the United States, the beaches are genuinely good, and all inclusive pricing means the week costs what you agreed it would cost.
Getting away from the resort strip is what saves it from being generic. The cenotes are freshwater sinkholes in the jungle, cold and clear and mostly empty early in the morning, and there are hundreds of them within a short drive.
Tulum has become expensive and busy, so the better value now sits around Akumal and Puerto Morelos, which are quieter and closer to the reef.
8. Turks And Caicos
Rough budget: $6,000 to $10,000
Grace Bay turns up at the top of world’s best beach lists often enough that it stops meaning much, but the water really is a colour that looks edited. Twelve miles of it, with a reef close enough offshore that there’s almost no surf.
This is a beach honeymoon and not much else, which is either the point or the problem depending on the couple. The islands are flat and quiet and there’s no old town to wander.
It’s also one of the pricier places in the Caribbean, largely because almost everything is imported. Renting a condo rather than taking a resort room is the usual way people bring the number down.
9. Lake Bled, Slovenia
Rough budget: $1,600 to $2,600
Lake Bled looks like something invented for a honeymoon and then built by accident. There’s a small island in the middle of a green lake with a church on it, a castle on a cliff above, and the Julian Alps behind the whole arrangement.
You reach the island on a pletna, a wooden boat rowed by hand, and there’s a local tradition of the groom carrying the bride up the ninety nine steps to the church. Plenty of couples do it years after the wedding.
Slovenia is still one of the better value countries in Europe, and the whole thing is small enough that you can add the Soca Valley or Ljubljana without much driving.
10. Tuscany, Italy
Rough budget: $3,000 to $5,000
Tuscany is the obvious one and it’s obvious for a reason. Hill towns, cypress trees, and a countryside that has been photographed to death without ever becoming less pleasant to sit in with a glass of something local.
The way to do it as a honeymoon is to stay put. Pick one agriturismo, a working farm with rooms, and drive out to a different town each day rather than dragging suitcases between four cities.
Val d’Orcia is the postcard region and it’s busy in summer. September and early October are better, with the harvest on and the crowds thinning out, and the light in those months is the reason photographers keep going back.
11. Zanzibar, Tanzania
Rough budget: $2,500 to $4,000
Zanzibar delivers an Indian Ocean honeymoon at maybe half what the Maldives or the Seychelles cost, and it comes with something those two don’t have, which is a place with a history.
Stone Town is a maze of carved doors, Omani and Indian and African all at once, and it smells like the spice trade that built it. Most couples spend a night or two there before heading to the coast.
The east coast beaches have enormous tides, so at low water the sea walks out for what looks like a mile and the dhows sit on the sand. The north around Nungwi holds its water better if swimming on demand matters to you.
12. Banff And Lake Louise, Canada
Rough budget: $3,000 to $5,000
Banff is the mountain honeymoon that doesn’t need a passport stamp anyone has to think hard about, and the lakes there are a shade of turquoise that comes from glacial silt rather than any tropical water.
Lake Louise and Moraine Lake are the two everyone comes for, and both now need a shuttle booking or a very early start in summer. Worth sorting before you arrive rather than finding out at the parking barrier.
Winter is the underrated version. The town is quieter, the hot springs are better in the cold, and the lodges cost less than they do in July.
13. Krabi, Thailand
Rough budget: $1,200 to $2,200
Krabi is the cheapest week on this list once you’re on the ground, and the flights are the only real expense. Limestone towers come out of the sea at angles that look impossible, and longtail boats run between beaches that have no road to them.
Railay is the one to stay on. It’s attached to the mainland but cut off by cliffs, so the only way in is by boat, which keeps it calm in a way the rest of the coast isn’t.
Go between November and March. The rest of the year the monsoon makes the boat crossings unreliable and a lot of the smaller places shut.
14. Provence, France
Rough budget: $3,000 to $5,000
Provence is a slow honeymoon, built around markets, long lunches, and villages stacked on hillsides. Nobody comes here to do things, which after a wedding is usually the correct instinct.
The lavender is the famous image and it has a narrow window, roughly late June to early August around the Valensole plateau. Miss it and the region is still lovely, just green instead of purple.
Base yourself in the Luberon and the good days come cheap. A market in Gordes, a bottle from a roadside vineyard, and a swim in the Sorgue costs almost nothing beyond the room.
15. Milos, Greece
Rough budget: $2,800 to $4,500
Milos is the Greek island for couples who want Santorini’s looks without Santorini’s prices or its cruise ship crowds. It’s volcanic, which gives it a coastline unlike anywhere else in the country.
Sarakiniko is the reason people come, a stretch of white rock worn smooth into shapes that look more like the moon than a beach. It gets busy in the middle of the day and is almost empty at seven in the morning.
There are around seventy beaches on the island and a lot of them can only be reached by boat, which is the standard day out. Hiring a small boat for the two of you costs less than you’d think.
16. The Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica
Rough budget: $3,000 to $5,000
The Osa is the wildest corner of Costa Rica, a peninsula on the Pacific side holding something like two and a half percent of the planet’s biodiversity in an area you could drive across in an afternoon.
Lodges here are mostly small, open sided, and run on solar, with no road to some of them. Waking up to scarlet macaws and going to sleep to howler monkeys is the trade for having no phone signal.
Corcovado National Park is the draw and needs a guide, which is a rule worth being glad about. A good one finds tapirs and anteaters that you would walk straight past.
17. Hvar, Croatia
Rough budget: $2,800 to $4,500
Hvar has a split personality that works well for a honeymoon. The town is a marble harbour with a Venetian fortress above it and a nightlife reputation, and twenty minutes inland it’s lavender fields and stone villages with nobody in them.
The Pakleni Islands sit just offshore, a scatter of pine covered rocks with swimming coves and a few restaurants, and the taxi boats run all day.
August is expensive and packed. Late May, June, and September are the sweet spots, when the sea is warm enough and the prices haven’t peaked.
18. The Masai Mara, Kenya
Rough budget: $8,000 to $15,000
A safari is the most expensive honeymoon on this list and the one couples talk about longest afterward. The Mara is open grassland with very high densities of big cats, and camps there are small, which is what you’re paying for.
Most rates are all inclusive, covering the tent, all meals, and two game drives a day with a guide. That makes the number look worse than it is compared with a beach week where everything is extra.
The great migration crosses the Mara roughly between July and October, and that’s peak pricing. Going in the shoulder months costs noticeably less and the resident wildlife hasn’t gone anywhere.
A balloon ride at sunrise over the plains is the standard splurge on top of the splurge, and almost nobody regrets it.
19. The Isle Of Skye, Scotland
Rough budget: $2,500 to $4,000
Skye is a moody, weather beaten honeymoon for couples who like a fire and a whisky more than a swim up bar. Ridges, sea cliffs, and light that changes every twenty minutes.
The Quiraing and the Old Man of Storr are the walks everyone does, and both are better very early because the small car parks fill by mid morning.
Accommodation is limited and books up a long way out, which is the one bit of planning this trip demands. A small inn on the water with good food is worth booking before anything else.
20. Patagonia, Chile
Rough budget: $6,000 to $10,000
Patagonia is the honeymoon for two people who would rather come home tired than rested. Torres del Paine is the centrepiece, a national park of granite towers, glaciers, and lakes in colours that don’t look real.
You don’t have to camp. There are lodges inside and around the park that run guided days out and feed you properly at the end of them, and that’s how most couples do it.
It’s far and the season is short, roughly November to March, which is what drives the cost. Wind is a constant and the weather turns fast, so the packing matters more here than anywhere else on the list.
21. Cape Town And The Winelands, South Africa
Rough budget: $2,500 to $4,000
Cape Town is remarkable value for what it is, which is a major city wedged between a mountain and two oceans with vineyards half an hour behind it. The exchange rate does a lot of work for foreign couples.
The usual shape is a few days in the city, then a few in Franschhoek or Stellenbosch, where the wine estates have small hotels and the tasting costs less than a glass would at home.
It also pairs neatly with a safari, since the Eastern Cape reserves are malaria free and a short domestic flight away. That combination is why a lot of couples pick South Africa over a single destination trip.
What About The Maldives And Bora Bora
They’re left off deliberately, and not because they aren’t wonderful. They’re the two places every honeymoon list opens with, and if they were already on your shortlist you don’t need another article telling you the water is clear.
They’re also both firmly in splurge territory with very little in between. A week in the Maldives at the low end still runs past what most of the destinations above cost at their high end, and the overwater villa everyone pictures is a good deal more than that.
If that’s the trip you want, it’s covered in more detail in the luxury travel destinations roundup, alongside Bora Bora, the Seychelles, and a few others in the same bracket.
How To Pick The Right Honeymoon Destination
Start with the date, because the wedding usually sets it and half these honeymoon destinations have a season that either works or doesn’t. Patagonia in June and Krabi in September are both bad ideas for the same reason.
Then be honest about travel time. A wedding leaves people wrecked, and a trip that takes two flights and a boat to reach costs you a day at each end when you’re least able to spare it. The Caribbean and Mexico earn their popularity here.
Work out which of you needs to do things. A week of nothing but a beach is heaven for one kind of person and quietly maddening for another, and that single question rules out more of this list than budget does.
Then set the number, and remember flights aren’t in the figures above. A cheap week in Thailand with expensive flights can land at the same total as a pricier week in Italy that’s half the distance away.
Final Thoughts
The best version of this trip is rarely the most expensive one available to you. Couples who spend everything on the room tend to remember the room, and couples who leave a little in the budget for a boat, a guide, or a very long lunch tend to remember the days.
The best honeymoon destinations are the ones that sound like the two of you rather than the ones that photograph best. Book early enough that the good places aren’t gone, and let the rest of it be easy.
