Why You Should Do Nothing For Your Honeymoon

Christy and Jer on their honeymoon horseback ride in Mexico.

Earlier this week, I wrote about all the effort that goes into planning a long-distance wedding when you’re doing it from here in Philly. My husband and I had a fair amount of fun working together on our wedding—and a whole lot of fun actually enjoying the wedding—but when the whole thing was done, I can honestly say I have never felt so tired in my life. Happy, but just bone tired.

In general, I would say that we’re doers—the sort of people who don’t like to sit around in life or on vacation: His best ever vacation was a hiking trip through Ecuador; mine was probably a two-week, 13-city jaunt across Europe. When we’d discussed honeymoons, we had, at first, gone in this sort of general direction: I really wanted to do a week in Paris, or maybe some island-hopping in Greece. But after countless couples heaped advice on us about honeymooning in some quiet beach where we could relax, we decided to try that route, and ended up booking about a week in Riviera Maya. If we got bored on the beach, we figured, we’d just travel to the nearby Mayan ruins or learn how to scuba or something.

Reader, we were not bored. We stayed at a lush and lovely resort called Mayakoba, which is a particularly stunning Rosewood property. We had coffee delivered to us every morning. We dipped in our private plunge pool on the same deck where we planted ourselves every evening to watch hundreds of giant birds swoop in to perch for the night in the mangrove that surrounded our private villa. We sauntered down to the beach and shaded ourselves in a cabana while waiters brought us Coronas whenever we ran dry. We played Chinese checkers and got just drunk enough on tequila, and told each other how lucky we were. We took naps in the sun. We ordered guac every single day at 3:30 p.m. We ordered tortilla soup every night. We left the property exactly one time, to ride very slow, very friendly horses and snorkel amongst happy sea turtles. We were so happy it almost hurt.

I say this not as an endorsement for Mayakoba (although it is—it’s heaven, obviously); this is an endorsement for the do-nothing honeymoon. You may climb mountains in your everyday life, you may regularly backpack across Asia, you may detest the idea of spending a chunk of your cash each day to just move from beach to bar to cabana. Trust me: None of that matters when it comes to a honeymoon. Don’t be a hero. Go to the beach, order a daiquiri and relax. You’ve not only earned it … you need it.

And you can plan your volcano-climbing trip next year.

What do you all think? Is your honeymoon the perfect time to truly let yourself relax—or do you think it’s for an active, trip-of-a-lifetime kind of getaway?

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