Where to go?

Now on to the honeymoon itself.  We went back and forth on where to go for a little while, and ended up choosing St Lucia based on the following criteria.

We wanted:

• an all-inclusive place (more on that later)
• no kids 
• not a huge party destination
• a great beach/warm weather
• interesting excursions
• someplace within our budget that had decent accomodation
• and that would leave enough money to fly first class
• little to no French people (at C's request)
• not your typical American destination (at my request)

So that ruled out all the French islands plus all the more popular Caribbean destinations.  And anyways, I was sort of against going to the Caribbean because it seemed like everyone and their dog had gone there on their honeymoon as of late.

C suggested Thailand, which we researched but couldn't find any all-inclusive places.  We'd decided on an all-inclusive resort because neither of us had ever tried on before and because we wanted to have a good handle on our budget.  Ie I didn't want to be sitting thinking the whole time"Omg, that cocktail costs HOW MUCH?"

I really wanted to go to Bora Bora, or more specifically to Vahiné Island, but everyone kept telling us you had to go for a minimum of three weeks because it was so far away, and that ruled it out budget-wise.

Our last idea was the Maldives, which fit all of our criteria except the all-inclusive one.

And so we started reconsidering the Caribbean, thinking that its proximity to the US would make it a shorter trip and thus doable during our already-planned trip to the US.

So the Caribbean it was and then it was just a matter of narrowing it down.  Jamaica, Barbados, etc where out because of their popularity, but then we came across Saint Lucia, and like I said in my previous post, its Anglo-French history appealed to me. On top of that, it had been voted the World's Best Honeymoon destination eight times, and the resort we chose was listed as the most Romantic resort in the Caribbean.  So Saint Lucia it was!