Alright, you’ve finally figured out where to go and you’re ready to book your honeymoon. But now the question is how long your honeymoon should actually be. The answer is different for every couple, and it totally depends on a multitude of factors:

• Your budget
• How long it takes you to get to your destination(s)
• How much time you can take off from your jobs
• How much you like being away from home

That being said, the average honeymoon length of the Real Honeymooners who’ve contributed to this blog is around 13 days. Some of the shortest honeymoons (excluding mini-moons) were 6 days, and the longest ones were an impressive 21 days. My own honeymoon was 16 days: 8 in Bali, and 8 in Vietnam.

Private beach on Hon Tam, Vietnam (from our own honeymoon)

If you’re having a hard time deciding how much time to spend on your honeymoon, it’s time for you and your significant other to think about the following questions:

• Do you envision your honeymoon to be a major (financial) blowout? If you’ve always wanted your honeymoon to be the most extravagant trip of your life, you may need to keep it on the shorter side in order to, you know, stay financially solvent.
• How much is there to do at your dream honeymoon destination? If you’ve always wanted to honeymoon for 2+ weeks, but you want to honeymoon in, let’s say, the Maldives, you* may get a bit restless after a week or so. (*Exclusions apply to self-proclaimed beach bums such as yours truly.)
• How many destinations do you want to visit during your honeymoon? My husband and I wanted to visit at least two countries during our own honeymoon, but in order to do so we had to give up a whole day of traveling between Bali and Vietnam. In our case it felt fine since we had enough time to relax in each destination, but had we tried to fit in a third country as well we would have felt too rushed.
• Do you guys really like being away from home? Some people I know frankly don’t like being a fish out of water for too long, so they purposefully kept their honeymoons on the shorter side.
• Have you two traveled together for longer than a week before? Traveling with another person for 2+ weeks can be challenging on your relationship, and perhaps you don’t want to test those waters during your honeymoon ;)

Once the two of you have honestly answered those questions, you should have a pretty good idea of how long of a honeymoon you really want. And just remember, nearly no one comes back from their honeymoon and says, “Man, I wish we came home earlier!”