Your Honeymoon Wedding List Checklist

Price your items to include something for everyone’s budget.

Even the smallest gifts can make for fabulous memories, but don’t underestimate your guests’ generosity either! If they want to spoil you, let them! Make sure you include a few real once-in-a-lifetime treats.

Your friends and family won’t expect you to be meticulously precise with your costings — so even if you’re paying an all-inclusive fee to your travel agent, don’t feel that you need to get an actual breakdown of specific costs. If the price of something on your list feels about right to you, it’ll feel about right to your guests.

Try to think of creative ways to turn your basic expenses into guest-friendly gifts.

It’s so much more appealing to your guests, who’ll want to feel that they’re giving you the time of your life, and not just paying for a normal holiday. Car hire, accommodation and air fare are all useful items to include, but consider listing upgrades instead.

Or maybe you could ask guests to sponsor 100 miles of your journey or to fund the first night of your hotel stay? Perhaps one of your guests might like to claim responsibility for the bar bill you don’t have to pay. Another might like to put their name on a day well-spent lazing beside the pool.

Consider having a mix of open contributions and one-off items.

Our sample lists show lots of detailed itineraries that are fantastic for getting ideas — but you can make your Buy Our Honeymoon gift list as simple or as comprehensive as you wish. You don’t have to have made all your plans, or to go into painstaking detail, but you’ll need to stay somewhere, you’ll need to eat, and you’ll need to travel to and from your honeymoon destination.

It’s worth remembering that guests engage much better with lists that have a variety of items. Your friends and family will want to feel what they’ve bought is special, unique and important to you.

Give your items interesting titles and descriptions.

Instead of “Contributions to Car Hire”, why not “The Open Road” or “The Wind in Our Hair” ..? Some couples even theme their item titles around song lyrics or film titles. You can be as playful and creative as you wish — and with Buy Our Honeymoon you have as much room as you need to tell the story you want to tell.

This can really help your guests to feel they are genuinely buying you a gift and not just making a cash donation. Even if you don’t yet know where you’re headed, you can talk about your ideas and hopes for your time away together.

Make your fund reflect your personality.

Fun and funky? Elegant and romantic? Is your dream honeymoon full of adventure? Or relaxation?

The more your list shows who you are, the more your guests are likely to enjoy using it, and to appreciate why you haven’t used a traditional wedding registry. Choose the theme that suits you best, divide your list into plenty of categories, and make those adjectives work for you!

Appeal to your guests’ sense of romance and luxury.

Include candlelit dinners, carriage rides and anything at sunset! You can be creative with the way you divide up items and write your descriptions to emphasise the romance. Perhaps you’ll want a picnic lunch away from the crowds? Or a farewell cocktail at the airport on your way home?

It’s useful to allow multiple guests to buy you certain items.

Some guests will leave buying you a gift until the last minute — or even after your wedding! Including some items that can be bought multiple times means there’s always something available on your list. And besides, you do need lots of bottles of champagne!

Write your descriptions in the first person.

Say “We’ll take a sunset dinner cruise” rather than “Take a sunset dinner cruise”. This makes your list feel much more personal, and less like a travel brochure.

It’s okay if your plans change.

On a practical level, your guests are handing you the monetary value of their gift, for you to spend accordingly. But you’re not committed to anything, and you can change your mind later — your guests really won’t mind.

Your friends and family love you, and they don’t secretly believe you’re going to spend your wedding gifts on your rent. If you get to your honeymoon destination to find that you can’t go parasailing because of bad weather, the fact that you can spend your gift on something else romantic and fun is a relief for everyone!

There’s only really one golden rule of etiquette: thank your guests.

Send a personal, handwritten thank-you note or card after you’ve returned from your honeymoon. Perhaps you could include a photo of you enjoying your gift?