You're in love, you've just declared it to everyone, and you're with the one person who counts - that's what matters in a honeymoon.
For some newlyweds, that special time means an exceptional place to finish off a wedding and launch a life together. "Some honeymooners, particularly those on a budget, want to go someplace close, and for those who can spend more, it could be a private island," says Sally Sells, the owner of Travel Anywhere, a travel agency in Center City.
Sells sends many couples to their special places, and choosing that location "often depends on how much the bride and groom have traveled. If they're sophisticated travelers, they're the ones who want to have an exotic experience."
For Sells and other travel agents who make a point of knowing honeymoon spots firsthand, "you have to know your client before you start suggesting a trip, and you can kind of tell what to suggest after the first 20 or 30 minutes."
These days, she says, higher-end honeymooners seek not only an exotic location and the frills that have become standard (sunshine, spas, great food) but an essential element: privacy.
So when Sells spoke to Tim and Kellie Rutten before the two Washington lawyers were married, she suggested Fiji, in three parts: first, at a rarefied resort; second, on a three-night cruise on the Blue Lagoon line, through Fiji's primordial Yasawa islands; and third, at Shangri-La, a larger resort near the airport, where the couple could mark their reentry into the real world. The two-week honeymoon cost just short of $20,000, and included a night's lodging in Los Angeles, on the way out.
The first resort, Namale, sounded so special, the couple decided to be married there - in fact, they eloped. "It's this beautiful setting, and I think maybe 90 percent of the couples staying there - maybe 30 couples were at the resort - were on their honeymoons," Tim Rutten says.
"You had your own bure (BOOR-ay), which is a thatched-roof hut, and no one was around you. You were secluded in the woods in this spectacular place. We had to climb some stairs to get to it and cross a bridge - we called it our little tree fort."
