How far in advance to book honeymoon?

I think Anniepie's advise is pretty comprehensive, just thought I would add my details as we booked through a different travel agent to annie so you can at least see that it seems a pretty general experience.

We booked our honeymoon twelve months beforehand, however we were told that flight times and prices could not be finalised until 11 months beforehand (as annie says). We ended up being charged an extra £400 for our flights when they eventually were confirmed - we fought this as they said it would be no more than a 10% increase and this was way over 20% so we did get it reduced, but it something to be mindful of.

We are having a honeymoon gift list but have not factored this into our budget - we will have to pay the balance of the honeymoon before most people will use the giftlist so we have to make sure we can afford it. Bearing in mind that many people won't buy or add to the gift list until the week before the wedding, waiting to book until people have done so wouldn't really work - and you could only do this if you have a honeymoon gift list with a private company rather than a travel agents. Many private gift list companies charge a fee for their service.

If there is any money left over on the giftlist, then the company will send us a cheque with the balance once we have closed the gift list.

There are plenty of honeymoon companies that can send you details by post and will have detailed conversations on the phone with you. If you genuinely can't get to a travel agents, this might be the best bet for you.

HTH.

I booked our honeymoon a month ago for June 2012, flights literally just started showing the day i booked them so as anniepie has said, airlines do sometimes have restrictions on when you can book certain things. i think with cruises you can book slightly more in advance though

I just booked my honeymoon today for Dec 2012. We are also doing the gift list, however after having the thought of " the inviets are generally sent out 10 weeks prior to the wedding and yet the honeymoon needs paid off 12 weeks before, the travel agent said a lot of people are sending the gift list ref numbers out with their save the dates, which is something i am considering just now. ( Just a thought for you regarding that aspect)

To be honest thats what i was thinking, is it too much too soon for the guests. Pardon the pun !!!

When planning my wedding, I found that vendors have a lot more openings than they used to because many people are putting off their weddings or scaling way down. You can use this to your advantage when it comes to your planning and you may also be able to get some deals with certain vendors.It's the thing is the find out the perfect travel agency and also find the perfect place for the honeymoon destination.

Why can I not see who the OP is? Just me?

Nope I can't see them either.

Phew I managed to find the post again, I thought maybe it was deleted as I was told all my old threads would be. I am the OP but I had my name changed and they managed to delete my account when they did it so I had to have a whole new account created instead, thats why you can't see my username associated with the original posts.....also explains why my post count is back down ☹️

Most flights become available 11 months before.

As we're getting married in Australia, we needed to book a flight to get there and then onward flights for our honeymoon, so I wanted to do it all with one company. We started making enquiries in about June of this year, phoning a couple of companies and inputting this year's dates just to get an idea of prices. When we found one we wanted, we paid the deposit (in August I think) even though the flights weren't available yet. They booked the flights as soon as they came out and we paid for those at the time. I think they could have reserved the seats for us, but we were advised to pay for them in full just in case taxes went up (or it could have been a ploy just to get us to pay!). We'll pay for the accommodation a few weeks before.

They've set up a gift scheme for us too, but we're not publicising it much, so we've booked it all on the basis that we'll be paying the whole lot. If people do contribute, then great, but we're not planning it on the basis that anyone will.

We booked the week before! ?

We were so busy with our preparations, stag+hen night and also other peoples Weddings, that by the time we made time to look, most of the flights had gone.

After speaking to a few online based agents, we went into the town on the Sunday before.

I think we got a good deal, 4 nights in Morrocoo, 4* hotel, fully inclusive with meet+greet parking and overnight hotel at Gatwick for £850

This was a good choice for us (early November), as the Weather was warm+dry and apart from a few trips+gifts, there was little need to spend any cash.

But, as has been said, the longer you leave it, the less choice you have. For us, we had a Wedding to DJ the following week, so this also limited our choice.

I've your got your heart set on somewhere specific, get in as early as you can.