Honeymoon.....so deflated

Hi

Sorry you are feeling deflated. I sent my travel agent an email for ideas and they came back with ridiculous prices BUT we were looking at pricey places. Go online and look about - you can get flights seperate or go to trailfinders and see what they can do. I would suggest going to several different travel agents anyway to compare prices.

You have plenty of time to find somewhere so don't stress, enjoy looking for your holiday of a lifetime.

Also remember your trip was in 2010 prices do rise x

In September, for £7k (exc. spending money), we had 17 days - 2 Singapore, 10 Bali, 5 Malaysia. This was a great mix of city, beach, wild outdoors. We spent excessively in some areas (e.g. 2 entirely unecesssary nights at one über-lux hotel) and obviously took a slightly extended time over it all. I reckon you could do similar, maybe a few daty shorter, maybe cutting out the real top-end stuff (it's not needed in Bali, every proper beach hotel has daybeds/poolside butlers/etc) within your budget.

Also, we booked with Kuoni and probably could have booked the same holiday elsewhere for cheaper (didn't know this at the time).

Kuoni have a sale on at the moment - have you looked on their website?

I'm sure you can get what you want for £5k. Which agents have you tried?

Kuoni will do you two weeks five star in Mauritius THIS September for £3300. I can't believe you couldn't swap out one of these weeks for five days in SA and still have to pay an extra £1700.

https://www.mahlatini.com/south-africa-and-mauritius-holidays

18 nights - 3 Cape Town, 2 wine region, 3 Garden Route, 3 safari, 7 Mauritius.

From £2100 pp.

Wow, thank you hitchers for superspeedy responses!

I have tried Kuoni, Imagine Africa and Turquoise holidays. Had totally forgotten about Trailfinders and mahlatini looks also exactly what we originally dreamed of - but were starting to cut bits out.

Thanks for your reassurance and your experiences which make me think this will not be impossible with a bit more investigating, this forum really is a godsend, you are all brilliant!

Also try travel counsellers. I think they are similar to trail finders. They would be able to put you together something I'm sure

We're doing this for our honeymoon too, although probably booking with trailfinders. I'm so excited! We're going Oct 2014!!

Kuoni and Turquoise (not sure about Imagine Africa) will come with a brand premium (Turquoise especially). Mrs C booked a Kuoni holiday with another agent - I wish I could remember who - and got a big discount off it.

Try more independent, specialist agents.

We set 6k as our honeymoon budget including our spending money. Originally I thought what we wanted (Singapore, Borneo, Hong Kong) wasn't affordable when I got quoted £6.5k (Kuoni) for room only accomodation but I tried about 5 different companies and both Destinology and Trailfinders offered a very similar deal for £4.2k. We went with Trailfinders in the end because they were so helpful and quick to get back to me and make all the little amendments we asked for. Keep shopping around.

We booked with Trailfinders for this September and are doing 8 nights in Mauritius and 2 nights in Dubai, £1350 per person for 3* half board accommodation, flights and transfers.

I am sure you should be able to get something amazing with a £5k budget!

September is definitely a challenging time of year to honeymoon!

Definitely worth ringing round some independent travel agents.

We have booked a Kuoni holiday through Blue Bay Travel and got £700 pounds off the Kuoni price and better flight times too

I had exactly the same issues and felt how you did...deflated!

We looked at 3 days in Vegas,4 in LA and 2 weeks in Hawaii and it came back at £7K which we couldnt justify seeing as we would need spending/food money aswell. We thought we were going to have to have a completely different honeymoon, but then we went back to Virgin and tweaked it to 3 days Vegas, 1 week in Hawaii and 5 days LA which took £2K off the price. Sometime the little tweaks make a big difference so you dont have to miss out doing what you want to. The travel agents are really helpful and will work with you to get what you want.

We also had quotes from a company called Holidaysplease who were fab and they also have a gift list option so could be wort checking them out. We are staying with Virgin purely because I get a 7% discount with them as I signed up to their flying club (which is free so def worth checking out signing up!). If you have Virgin Media you can get 5% off holidays booked with them which is a useful bit of info x

I went to Kenya for a chill and safari honeymoon with Thompson that was about 4k

My sister has just booked a usa honeymoon. Starts in Florida and then they hire a car and drive down the coast stopping at various places and doing all sorts. They got quoted a HUGE amount from one company so tried Virgin and it was about half the price for exactly the same thing. Defo shop around!

When searching for our honeymoon, we found Kuoni to be extremely expensive, although we LOVED their customer service. In fact, their initial quote for us was over £1000 more than we ended up paying for the same package booked independently, which we couldn't justify paying.

Trailfinders were more budget friendly.

I would personally recommend looking into making independent bookings via an online agent or direct with airlines and hotels. We've saved a huge amount of money by doing this, and providing you book with an EU based airline and use a credit card, you'll receive additional cover.

I would normally agree, but if you are using different airlines for different legs of the trip, you can accrue a couple of single journeys (as opposed to returns) that really whack the price up.

When I investigate just our honeymoon flights (using the same as the travel agents), the cost of these alone (in fact, the cost of just one leg) was more than the whole honeymoon booked via an agent.