Top 10 Ways to Save Money on Your Honeymoon

1. Sign up with a Honeymoon Registry

It's customary for couples to register for wedding gifts. But what if you already have most of the items on a typical registry list? Join a honeymoon registry, and you create a wish list of vacation items — hotel nights, candlelight dinners, excursions. When guests purchase those as gifts, some or even all of the honeymoon gets paid for by others. After you register, ask your maid of honor and best man to spread the word. Do read the small print: Some registries take a big chunk out of gift dollars.

• Honeymoon Registry Basics
• Honeymoon Adventure Registry
• Honeymoon Cruise Registry
• Caribbean Honeymoon Registry

2. Budget Before You Buy

Before you try to figure out how to save money on your honeymoon, know how much you have to spend. Whether you're surprised in a good way (lotsa money!) or in a not-so-good-way (we'll be practically broke after the wedding), it's necessary to have an amount in mind in order to start pricing flights and lodgings. Use the following tools to help decide how much you can afford to spend on your honeymoon trip:

• Travel Budget Worksheets
• Where to Save/Where to Splurge
• Honeymooners' Budget Poll
• How and Where to Exchange Currency

3. Travel Close to Home

Transportation is often the biggest expense in a honeymoon. If you can minimize those costs you'll have more to spend on lodging, and perhaps afford to add another day or more to the honeymoon. Since airfares can be steep, consider saving money on your honeymoon by making it a driving vacation. And if you don't have too many days to devote to the honeymoon, staying relatively close to home (which should never be confused with staying with relatives on your honeymoon!) is a time-saver.

• Scenic USA Driving Routes Coast to Coast
• How to Rent Your First Car
• Use the Free AAA TripTik

4. Go Off-Season

Regardless of the month you plan to take your honeymoon, it's always low season (a cheaper time to visit) somewhere. For instance, instead of paying top dollar at a ski resort after a December wedding, you can get bargain rates — and find plenty to do on the slopes — in July. If you're beach lovers, don't let the words "hurricane season" completely scare you off of visiting Florida or the Caribbean between June and November. Plenty of people live in those places year-round, and more often than not showers are brief and the sun soon emerges.

• Cheapest Months to Travel
• How to Avoid a Hurricane
• When to Go Where

5. Enjoy a Quickie

Not every honeymoon involves a grand tour of Europe and lasts two weeks or more. You can pack a lot of lovin' into a long weekend, especially if you don't travel far from home. Look into romance packages at local hotels and weekend getaway deals.

• Romantic Escapes Near Major Cities
• Last-Minute Travel: What You Need to Know
• Romantic Getaways in the USA and Canada
• Weekend Getaways Directory

6. Take a Cruise

Cruises are cost-efficient vacations, especially if you leave from your home port rather than flying to meet the ship. They're all-inclusive for the most part. And the shorter the cruise, the less you'll have to pay. There are even overnight "cruises to nowhere" (but those are basically party and gambling boats and not as nice for honeymoons). If you choose a cruise lasting from 3 to 7 days, that's ample time to celebrate your new state of matrimony.

• Cruising for Romance
• Honeymoon Cruise Packages
• How to Choose a Cruise that's Right for You
• Yes, You Can Afford a Cruise

7. Discover the New Bargain Brands

There's a lot of competition in the travel industry, and you're the beneficiary. When you travel, you no longer have to pay top dollar for airlines or hotels. Discover which brands consistently offer the most value at the lowest price, and where you can get more for less:

• Book Luxury Hotels for Less
• Cheap Airlines with Cheap Airfares
• Finding Fare Deals
• Hip New Budget Hotels for Honeymooners
• Traveling the Super-Cheap and "Easy" Way

8. Bid on a Travel Auction

Going... going... gone! That can be you, if you bid on and win a travel auction. Thanks to the transparency of prices on the Web, couples who put in the time to research beforehand can be savvy about what cruises and vacations cost. That enables them to bid on a travel auction without paying more than something is actually worth.

• Cruise Auctions
• Vacation Auctions

9. Check into a Casino

Casinos tend to lowball room prices to lure in gamblers. But how about going to a casino and not gambling? Then you have the pleasure of a nice room, good restaurants, shows by well-known entertainers, and facilities that usually include swimming pools and spas. If you're disciplined enough to do this — or are able to set aside a small budget for gambling losses — a casino stay can help you spend less money on your honeymoon. But if you don't trust yourselves to hold onto your cash or one of you has an addictive personality, don't go.

• Best Las Vegas Casino Hotels
• Gambling on Love
• Niagara Falls Casinos

10. Win a Free Honeymoon

Speaking of trying your luck, why not enter vacation travel contests to try to win a free honeymoon? I link to ones sponsored by legitimate companies, so the worst that could happen is that you give up some personal information when you fill out an entry and get some spam. And the best that could happen is that you win an all-expenses-paid trip to someplace truly great — the ultimate way to save money on a honeymoon!

• Free Travel Contests
• Honeymoon Trip Contests
• Trip Contests with a Long Lead Time