After months of deliberating, we finally booked our honeymoon.
Before I tell you where we are going, a little background first.
In the three years Daphne and I have been dating, we haven’t taken any major vacations (a week or more). We generally do short trips to visit family or friends and we did go to Key West for a few days in 2006 for Daphne’s birthday.
Since we knew our honeymoon would be our fist major vacation together, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves. We felt like this trip had to be perfect and include elements of things we’d always wanted to do, such as:
- practice my declining Spanish skills
- relax on the beach
- see culture, perhaps a big European city
- do fun activities, like kayaking or riding on a zip line
- stay in a luxury hotel
But meeting all of these demands and staying within our budget was a challenge. The other thing working against us was vacation time. Since we’re getting married in New Jersey but live in Orlando, we’ve used most of our vacation time flying up north for wedding planning as well as other trips to see family and friends that we usually take.
We considered delaying our honeymoon until early 2009, when we would have more vacation days. And the rainy season would be over in Costa Rica, which was high on our list.
But, the more we thought about it, we decided that we didn’t want to go back to work right after the wedding. Costa Rica would have to wait.
We finally settled on a new all-inclusive resort in Mexico’s Riviera Maya called Secrets Maroma Beach. Like Sandals, Secrets is an adults only all-inclusive chain that’s popular with honeymooners.
The resort is scheduled to open on August 1. We booked through AAA and because the resort is brand new and because it is our honeymooon, we got an amazing deal on one of the nicest suites — it has an oceanview and a jacuzzi on the balcony.
We were a little worried, because the resort was originally supposed to open in July and was pushed back. But we figure November will give them plenty of time to open and even if it wasn’t open in November, Secrets has another resort nearby which is the third most popular hotel in the area on TripAdvisor and is supposed to be very nice.
Secrets Maroma is a five star resort, with 14 pools, six restaurants and it’s on a beach that has been named the best beach in the world several times. It’s about 30 miles from Cancun and not far from the Mayan ruins, so we can take some excursions if we choose.
I’ve been having fun reading through forums on TripAdvisor because a lot of people like us have booked at Secrets Maroma and are looking for information to make sure they will open as planned. Most of the people who post are staying there in August or September, so I imagine they are a little more worried about it not being open on time than we are. I even saw postings from at least two other couples who will also be celebrating their honeymoons at the resort the same week we will be there.
After the wedding we’re flying back to Orlando on Sunday and then flying out Monday morning to Cancun. We fly back the following Sunday. One nice thing is that we got non-stop flights on JetBlue, which is one of our favorite airlines, because of the in-flight TV and the fact that they let you take more than one snack (the animal crackers and blue potato chips are especially good).
Here are a few photos from their web site (which could use a makeover and some more details)
