Review Your Honeymoon Online—Before You Book It

Once you've narrowed down the possibilities for your honeymoon to a few good ideas, checking out other couples' stories can help you make a final decision. You can learn a lot from travel websites and guidebooks, but nothing beats the advice of fellow honeymooners who have actually been there. Here are X ways to start looking for those honeymoon stories.

1. Start at Creative Honeymoon Ideas. If you haven't browsed this site already, you will find that many of the ideas listed here have links to couples' online honeymoon stories. Some of the links to those stories are collected on our Honeymoon Stories page.

2. Do a custom search. If you can't find stories for your honeymoon destination on this site, you might want to try searching online. . .but if you just type the name of your destination plus the word "honeymoon," you're going to have to wade through a lot of irrelevant websites, most of them wanting to sell you something. Say, for instance, that you're interested in a Belize honeymoon. Search for Belize honeymoon and you get mostly travel agencies. Instead, use quotes to define phrases that are most likely to appear in a story that a couple might write about their honeymoon in Zambia: "our honeymoon" Belize "and I", for instance, and all of the top results are first-hand reviews or stories from couples who have done a Belize honeymoon. (For more obscure locations, you may need to drop the "honeymoon" from your search and focus on simply finding travelogues from people who have been to your destination.)

3. Search for videos. The major streaming video websites are a treasure trove of travelogues, including honeymoons. You'll find many slideshows accompanied by music, but straight narrative as well. Our honeymoon video page is a good place to sample what's out there.

4. Check out travel reviews on these websites. Many websites offer users the chance to write reviews of travel destinations, but here are three we particularly like:

• TripAdvisor - What makes this site one of our favorite resources for researching honeymoons—and why you'll find links to it from all over this site—is the vast number of reviews by ordinary people who have actually been to the place they are reviewing. Because it's so popular, you'll find user reviews on virtually every destination in the world. Because most destinations are reviewed by many different people, you'll find a wide variety of experiences and opinions. Find a place that every reviewer loves, and it's probably a safe bet for your honeymoon.

• Epinions.com: Travel - Like TripAdvisor, Epinions offers travel reviews by ordinary travelers, although travel isn't the only topic covered by the site.

• Lovetripper Romantic Travel Magazine

  A romantic travel magazine featuring stories on romantic destinations worldwide.

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