In my last post I talked about waiting to book our honeymoon. Well, we officially decided to wait until late January 2013 to book our “real” honeymoon to Antigua, so we decided to plan a so-to-speak ”mini-honeymoon” after the wedding.

So I know you are thinking, why plan a mini-honeymoon when we can just do the real thing? Well, MG Bear and I have a flight credit with Southwest that we have to use before October of this year, so instead of wasting the money we already spent we figured why not go somewhere after the wedding! Plus, we won’t be taking our week long trip to Myrtle Beach because of all this wedding stuff. We decided to go to Fort Lauderdale, Florida (which is only a 2 hour flight for us from Maryland) and after doing some research we found the Beach Comber Resort right on the beach! They have great prices on rooms and it looks perfect for the laid back vacation we are looking for.

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Well, I am happy to report that our honeymoon has been booked. This whole thing was the last bit of planning on our minds and much to a lot of our friends dismay we were thinking about just heading to Bar Harbor and enjoying Maine.

However, I rather enjoy checking out groupon and living social deals so one morning I noticed a deal on living social for a 5 night stay in an all inclusive resort in Cozumel! Between mister pom and myself we also have enough miles on the Star Alliance airlines to get us there for free! Now here’s hoping we can line up the days right…a lot of the time the redemption miles are very hard to book. But either way, boy are we excited! How did you all plan for your honeymoon? Have any if you been to Cozumel? I would love some tips on what to do there…other than lounge.

Today, I bought a scale. Yupp. I haven’t even taken it out of the box yet, but just the knowledge that it is sitting there waiting for me is a little more than daunting. That’s right. I’m officially on the “getting more fit for my wedding” bandwagon. That dress won’t look fabulous by itself (okay.. yes it would, but I’d still like to do my part ).

Kicking my butt into gear!

Let me explain. I’m currently a size up from my usual due to a very severe ankle sprain that occurred a few months ago in while in Ireland (two words: Irish cider). This kept me on the couch for a week and off the running track for almost three months. I’d definitely like to be back to my usual size if not a size smaller by the big day. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those brides that purposefully ordered her dress several sizes too small as an “incentive” to lose weight. My dress fit just fine when I tried it on in the bridal shop. And due to my shape and the cut of the dress (pear-shape for me, a-line with a fitted bodice and voluminous bottom for the dress), I can easily go up or down a few sizes and it will still fit me perfectly; a small blessing of being a pear girl is that my top half has stayed the same size no matter what and is therefore one less thing I have to worry about looks-wise. While a belly bulge is something that won’t be apparent in my gown, my arms will be out in their full glory. And you had better bet that I’ll be sporting some toned and sexy limbs that day! Time to get to lifting weights, I suppose!

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I am so excited! We have officially booked out honeymoon! We were not sure what we wanted to do at first. We wanted to go lay on a beach in Hawaii, then we wanted to go to Europe. It was a really tough decision. We just weren’t sure if we wanted to go to an all inclusive place and relax or spend our time being tourists! I won a trip from the Kidd Kraddick Show in February to the Hard Rock Resort in Punta Cana that we are taking this year, so we didn’t need a beach for the honeymoon!!

So…we really wanted to do something different so we are going to Europe! We are going to Dublin and Paris!

Why Dublin and Paris? I use to live in Dublin for a study abroad and LOVED IT. Mr. Cherry was not able to visit me when I lived there- this is my chance to show him what are my favorite things about Dublin! We are going to stay here:

The Shelbourne

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So a few weeks ago I blogged about where in the world Apricot Dude and I were going to go on our honeymoon. Well…..after lots of research, we decided to book our trip to the Bahamas! Apricot Dude and I were completely sold on the beautiful beaches, excellent reviews (both personal and from the internet), and a great professional recommendation from our travel agent.

So excited to play the course! I might even hit one in the ocean for the heck of it!

Here are just a few tips that we picked up on while working on our honeymoon plans. When looking at an all-inclusive resort, make sure you know what all is included. This leads me to my next tip and that is to work with a travel agent. Typically, there are not any extra fees associated with booking through your travel agent. Actually, you help them out quite a bit as they usually get a cut from the resort for booking a trip! Your travel agent should have a detailed layout of the inclusions from the resort. Another tid-bit I would share with those planning is to check into what extras or little bonuses you can have thrown into your package. Our awesome travel agent got us a $200 spa credit and $200 golf credit- both things I am SIKED about. My final tip is to ask questions if you don’t know the answer. We called Sandals to ask if airport transfers were included and sure enough- they were!

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Shortly after arriving in Atlanta, Georgia for our layover we called the parents to check-in and let them know we were safe on the ground at least for awhile. That’s when my mother-in-law broke the news. Her morning Facebook browsing uncovered that our aunt, uncle and co. would be leaving on the same cruise with us the next day!

I was originally seriously pissed, and here’s why: the family joining us on the honeymoon hadn’t bothered to RSVP in anything close to an official manner and didn’t show up at our wedding… but they were going on our honeymoon!

{Our personal photo}

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We enjoyed a wonderful honeymoon cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas.

Although we were one of nearly 100 couples celebrating their honeymoon on board, the staff and other cruisers made our honeymoon special!

Here are a few photo highlights (no worries, it’s PG!)

(All photos contained in this post are from our personal files)

A beautiful hotel room with a beautiful view the night before.

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So Apricot Dude and I recently began our exploration into one of the best parts of wedding planning: HONEYMOON RESEARCH!!!!! I must say, I’m ready to just fast forward to June 10th next year and be on a beach. Sigh…………

Back to reality—call us crazy but we initially wanted to go to Tahiti! I’ve have heard nothing but incredible things about the area and thought that it would truly be a once in a lifetime trip. Well, after much research I realized that it might take up our once in a lifetime budget as well. Plane tickets alone were outrageous and we decided that we would be a bit more conservative in our spending. Another sigh….

So we have been looking in the Caribbean, Punta Cana and the Bahamas especially. I’m intrigued by Antigua just for its more private beaches and less of a popularity. The Sandals properties have been especially appealing. I have heard awesome things from friends who have went as well as online reviews. From the looks of it, the properties are clean, offer friendly service, private and just an overall great experience. We are leaning towards the newest Sandals, their Emerald Bay property in the Bahamas.

Sandals Emerald Bay Pool (Photo Courtesy Sandals.com)

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After countless days of trying to figure out a great package for our honeymoon and contacting travel agents…I finally booked our honeymoon.

{Allure of the Seas}

We have decided to go on a 7 day cruise to the Caribbeans on the newest and BIGGEST ship in the world called Allure of the Seas (Royal Caribbean).  My aunt told me that this was the most fun cruise she’s ever been on.  She told me it has the best entertainment and activities.  Even if you have to be stuck on the ship for all 7 days, there’s so much stuff to do that you won’t be bored!  Lol…so guess what I’m excited for the most?  Well, other then spending time with my future hubby.  I’m stoked about going on the giant water slide that starts from half of the ship to the front!!  =)  I’ll probably be the only adult in line amongst a whole bunch of kids anxiously trying to go on the slide.  And if those kids try to butt in front of me, they won’t hear the end of it!  JK of course.

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We booked our July 2011 honeymoon in August 2010. Choosing our honeymoon destination was quite the long, elaborated story for two people who want to travel the world (practically). So I’m going to do this in segments. Today: how we chose!

Mr. Magnolia and I decided to prioritize the honeymoon, allocating quite a large budget to it. It will be the first time we take a proper trip together – if we exclude road trips, of course. We decided to give ourselves two and a half weeks for our honeymoon.

So we started thinking about where to go. With our budget and time frame, we could go to Europe.

Oh, Paris, how we long to visit thee.

I went to Europe in August 2009. I knew that Euro trips are a lot of sight-seeing, walking around, and as gorgeous as they are, they are also exhausting.

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