Sandals Honeymoon Contest

We don’t often post or promote specific vendors, but we occasionally make exceptions where there is a clear benefit to our readers.

Sandals Resorts is offering some lucky couple the chance to win a Dream Honeymoom. Good luck with the contest!

Sandals Honeymoon Test Drive

A recent comment on our blog by Amanda W. asked about Sandals Weddingmoon and the “Test Drive your honeymoon.” She’s reluctant to sign up and asks if we know anything about the “Test Drive” because it seems like a timeshare sales pitch.

The answer to the question is an honest one – we don’t know. We vaguely remember hearing something about the “test drive” some time ago, but we didn’t do it (although we did consider Sandals). The trips are one day (out in the morning, back in the evening) and are only offered from a limited number of east coast cities. Sandals adds the normal conditions (space is limited space, subject to availability, etc., etc.). Cost for the day trip is $99 and includes airfare.

So Amanda, for $99 and one day off of work, you can have a one-day trip to Jamaica, see the resort and know exactly what you’re getting into. (We did this with the Westin Our Lucaya in the Bahamas, but had to pay the full amount and made a long three-day weekend of it). If you do the test drive and then book a honeymoon, Sandals will apply your $99 to the honeymoon package. Presumably they would do the same thing for a Weddingmoon, but the website doesn’t actually say it (best to call and ask some specific questions. Actually, you should definitely call since there aren't many specifics on the website).

It’s a brilliant piece of marketing for Sandals – give your target audience a sample your resort. The cost of $99 essentially covers the airfare, so the company isn’t out anything except for lunch and a few fruity drinks. Now, if the Sandals resorts really wanted to sell their packages, they would charge couples $200 and let them stay overnight for free. Now that’s a test drive!

Fair disclosure: Despite all of our travels, we’ve never actually been to a Sandals resort (although we’ve been thinking about one of their places in St. Lucia-see picture)…so, we can’t actually recommend them (we can’t dissuade you either). So Amanda W., you’re on your own with Sandals. If you decide to do it, I hope you’ll e-mail us and tell us about your experience.

Preston Bailey on Destination Weddings

Wedding guru Preston Bailey, who partners on destination weddings with the Sandals Resorts, has an interview up on YouTube (more on destination weddings at Sandals next week). See the Preston Bailey interview:



Preston Bailey’s tips for destination weddings include:

• Use the natural scenery
• Use local vendors
• Flexible activity schedule

We would agree with each of these.

One of the advantages of destination weddings are that the scenery (oftentimes a beach or a castle) forms the backdrop for your wedding. This means you can get away with less decorations, but can also use decorations that are native to the location where you are having your wedding.

Bailey recommends using local vendors. We would agree, but with a caveat. Using local vendors takes the hassle out of shipping lots of stuff. However, the caveat is that you might not always be able to find something you want in your location. For our Caribbean wedding, we took some tulle and ribbons from a local Michael’s craft store, but otherwise used the ocean as our backdrop.

Finally, have a flexible activity schedule. This is key. We found that having both flexible options and lots of options was important for guests. We had a couple of defined events (a welcome reception the night before, the wedding, a post-wedding cocktail party and then reception were all carved in stone). Then we had other events (renting wave runners, bar hopping in town, etc.) that were optional/elective events for those who wanted to participate.

These are great tips from Preston Bailey.

Note: We found this on YouTube and it was posted from something called Brideorama (a bridal video community). We’ve never used Brideorama, so can’t recommend it.

Honeymoon Strategies

Since a destination wedding, by default, includes some sort of travel, couples are inclined to tack the honeymoon onto the wedding. Sandals Resorts calls them a Weddingmoon. And there is some appeal in doing this since it minimizes time away from work and maximizes your travel budget.

However, if you have guests coming, you don’t really want them around on your honeymoon. You can either tolerate some guests hanging on (as they inevitably will be one or two who will) or you can think of some other options.

There are two strategies to cope with this:

• Continue with the trip, but go to another location. This is what we did with our destination wedding in the Bahamas. We got married on one island, but then went to another island for the honeymoon. A friend of ours got married in France with a large entourage of family, but then went to Spain for their honeymoon.
• Come home and take a separate honeymoon a few months later. This way, you get two trips for one occasion! This is definitely more expensive, but is nice to space out the festivities.

The right answer is the one that works for you!