12 great festivals to attend on your honeymoon

If you’re looking for a wide variety of great food, entertainment, and people on your honeymoon, then plan it around a festival; it’s kind of like attending a huge party in honor of your wedding.

Festivals range from the wacky (watch couples race in the Wife-Carrying World Championships in Finland) to the culturally rich (such as the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival). Below, we describe a few festivals as a way to get you thinking about the possibilities. Most likely, though, you’ll need to do some browsing to find a festival that fits your tastes and schedule. Here are a few tips:

• If you’ve already settled on a honeymoon destination, check regional tourism web sites for festivals that may be going on in the area during your honeymoon.
• If you’re still deciding on a destination start at any one of the many websites that index festivals around the world; we list several such sites in the links section below.
• Search for festivals on Google: Go to the advanced search page. In the “all of the words” field, enter your destination (if you’ve decided on one) and the month of your honeymoon. In the “any of the words” field, enter the terms festival, carnival, and fair.

Thousands of festivals are held every year around the world; here we’ve just selected a few examples.

January

World Buskers Festival (Christchurch, New Zealand): The ten-day World Buskers Festival is, according to its website, “one of world’s largest and best street performance festivals.” “Busking” is any sort of street performance, and the World Busking Festival has more than 350 of them: “acrobats, comedians, contortionists, dancers, escapologists, fire eaters, jugglers, living statues, magicians, mimes, musicians, sword swallowers and pavement artists.”

February

Québec Winter Carnival (Québec City): The Québec Winter Carnival is the world’s largest winter carnival, and the third-largest carnival overall. Hundreds of thousands of people gather in the heart of Québec’s Old City to participate in a wide variety of events during the carnival’s two and a half weeks: night parades, an international snow sculpture show, a dogsled race, dances, concerts, fireworks, candlelight dinners, dogsled and sleigh rides, and a painting symposium are among the carnival’s highlights. Among the odder events are the snow bath, in which dozens of men and women don swimsuits to bathe in the snow, the canoe race across the frozen St. Lawrence River, and a life-size fooz ball game. A giant ice castle dominates the carnival grounds. Besides the carnival, Québec’s Old City is a romantic destination for a honeymoon in itself.

March

Pre-Lenten Carnivals: Carnivals in Rio de Janeiro and Mardi Gras in New Orleans are the world’s largest and most famous festivals, but pre-Lenten carnivals are held in cities around the world in February and March: Festivals.com profiles carnivals in Nice, France; Singapore; Venice, Italy; and Binche, Belgium.

International Cherry Blossom Festival (Macon, Georgia): Who could resist a festival inspired by love, beauty, and international friendship—not to mention 275,000 blossoming cherry trees? Starting in the 1970s, the residents of Macon, Georgia, began planting beautiful Yoshino cherry trees (the same type of cherry tree found in Washington, D.C.) to beautify their town. A Cherry Blossom Festival followed in 1982; today, the ten-day International Cherry Blossom Festival attracts hundreds of thousands of people from around the world. The festival features more than 500 events, most of which are free. According to the festival website, events include a hot-air balloon fest and air show, dances, parades, arts and crafts, amusement rides, fireworks, historic tours, complimentary horse-drawn carriage rides, Cherries ‘n Cream ice cream, and daily concerts by top artists.

April

The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (Jazz Fest): New Orleans is known for Mardi Gras, but this is the town that never seems to stop partying. It’s a city of festivals, including Jazz Fest, a festival celebrating the indigenous music and culture of Louisiana: blues, R&B, gospel, Cajun, zydeco, Afro-Caribbean, folk, Latin, rock, rap, country, bluegrass—oh yeah, and jazz. According to the Jazz Fest website, the festival spans ten days and involves thousands of musicians, cooks and craftspeople. Half a million visitors come for music on twelve stages, crafts artisans from around the world, and lots and lots of food: Creole stuffed bread, fried frog legs, pecan catfish Meunière, crawfish etouffée, seafood cornbread, shrimp macque choux, gumbo, po-boys, fried oyster, catfish filet, muffuletta, alligator sausage, snow crab maki-sushi, jama-jama, vegetarian spring roll, Jamaican jerk chicken, peach cobbler, coconut pie, sweet potato bread, pecan-praline cookies, and more (hungry yet?). Visitors have the opportunity to learn from artists (and vice versa) in the festival’s Workshop Series. Jazz Fest is held at the Fair Grounds Race Course, just about ten minutes from the French Quarter.

May

Brighton Festival (Brighton, England): The three-week Brighton Festival features “the best in world dance, theatre, classical and contemporary music as well as books and debates and street arts,” according to the festival website. The festival features hundreds of events ranging from author panels to opera, theater, dance, and workshops. Outdoors, hundreds of street performers from around the world present free, live (often wacky) performances throughout the festival. Brighton’s own version of Spain’s Las Fallas Festival features giant papier-mâché statues “caricaturing the great and not so good in a riotous pageant of parades and fireworks.” The Brighton Fringe Festival runs at the same time, featuring music, theatre, dance, comedy, literature and open houses at local art galleries.

June

World Worm Charming Championship (Willaston, England): According to Festivals.com, “Participants use music—including chiming garden forks—to get as many worms out of their square plot as they can in 30 minutes.”

Lewis & Clark Festival (Great Falls, Montana): During this Step back in time to join Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and their Corps of Discovery on the banks of the Missouri River in 1805.

July

Wife-Carrying World Championships (Sonkajärvi, Finland): What better way to spend your honeymoon, really, than to win the Wife-Carrying World Championships? Yes, this is a real sport (see, we even provided a picture to prove it). According to Wikipedia, wife-carrying is “a sport in which male competitors race while each carrying a female teammate. The objective is for the male to carry the female through a special obstacle track in the fastest time. The sport was first introduced at Sonkajärvi, Finland.” You’ll be happy to know there are several other wife-carrying competitions around the world, including one in Minocqua, Wisconsin.

August

The Awa Dance Festival (Tokushima, Japan): This dance festival is the largest dance festival in Japan, according to Wikipedia: “Groups of choreographed dancers and musicians known as ren dance through the streets, typically accompanied by the shamisen lute, taiko drums, shinobue flute and the kane bell. Performers wear traditional obon dance costumes, and chant and sing as they parade through the streets.”

September

Dieppe International Kite Flying Contest (Dieppe, France and Dieppe, Canada): Here’s a festival that occurs in two different countries. There’s an annual festival held in Dieppe, New Brunswick, Canada; and then there’s the bi-annual kite-flying festival held in Dieppe, France (on the Normandy coast). Both feature invited kite-flying experts from around the world, and both attract thousands of visitors (700,000 in the case of the French version) for several days of amazing kite flying, celebrations, and cultural events. The Canadian festival is held in August, while the French festival is held in September.

October

National Storytelling Festival (Jonesborough, Tennessee): “The National Storytelling Festival is the oldest and most respected gathering devoted to the art of storytelling anywhere in America,” according to the Library of Congress “America’s Story” website. Nearly 10,000 people descend on historic Jonesborough, Tennessee (population 4,000) every October to be spellbound by tales told by the world’s best storytellers. Why? Perhaps because live storytelling, the oldest form of entertainment, still has the power to move people to tears, gales of laughter, deep insight, and hope. Stories are told in several large tents all day and well into the night during the three-day festival; the Midnight Cabaret and Ghost Stories are especially popular nighttime events. Although most of the storytellers are professionals, anyone can tell stories at the Swappin’ Ground. Picturesque Jonesborough is an attraction in itself, having preserved its historic charm. It is home to the National Storytelling Center, and it is considered the birthplace of country music; appropriately enough, live music is offered in the town square every Friday night from May through September. If you can’t make it to Jonesborough for the National Storytelling Festival, search the web for one of the many other storytelling festivals that began due to the National Storytelling Festival’s popularity.

International Balloon Fiesta (Albuquerque): This event has grown so popular since its inception in 1972 that the image of hundreds of colorful hot air balloons ascending into a turquoise-blue sky has become almost synonymous with New Mexico. That image is from the Fiesta’s “mass ascensions,” in which about 750 hot air balloons rise into the sky over a two-hour period beginning around dawn. Days at the Fiesta feature mass ascensions, competitions and races, and visits to the Balloon Discovery Center. Visitors can even wander the grounds, walking among the balloons and talking to the pilots. At night, the balloons are inflated and lit from within, creating a magical, colorful landscape. Special shape balloons add a whimsical flavor to the fiesta—look, it’s a flying house (or car, cactus, cow, etc.)! If you have a few hundred extra bucks to spare, you can even ride into the sky on a hot-air balloon during the Fiesta through Rainbow Ryders (other hot air balloon rides are available, presumably at a cheaper rate, several miles from the Fiesta). The Fiesta isn’t all hot air, though; live entertainment, car and quilt shows, and the Fiesta del Vino wine-tasting festival (featuring free samples of New Mexico’s award-winning wines) offer welcome distractions from the main event. The downside to this event is that it can be crowded, drawing up to 100,000 people; also, Albuquerque isn’t usually considered a top honeymoon destination—although you might find a romantic retreat in nearby Santa Fe (about an hour from Albuquerque) or Taos (about two and a half hours).

November

Pirates Week (Cayman Islands): Pretty much what you’d expect from a pirate festival held in the Caribbean. The festival website describes it as eleven days of “music, street dances, competitions, games, wonderful local food and drink, kids day, glittering parade, sports events for everyone, Heritage Days, pirate invasion and fireworks galore!” A song contest, street dances, and a mock pirate invasion that attracts thousands are all highlights of the festival. And, hey, it’s in the Cayman Islands!

December

Festival of Lights (Lyons, France): For four days every December, the city of Lyons, France celebrates light in honor of the Virgin Mary, who is thought to have interceded on behalf of the town to spare it from a plague in the 17th century. The festival culminates on the 8th of December, when every home in the city places candles in windows, creating a spectacular effect.

For even ore festival listings, try 2Camels.com or  Festivals.com.

Photos are courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and used under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. Excerpts from Wikitravel are used under a Creative Commons 3.0 license.