A few things I learned from designing my own honeymoon — and that I still believe today when we design them at Latitude Boreal.

By Sofia Mármol

There are many beautiful journeys we take throughout our lives. But very few mark the beginning of an entirely new chapter.

A honeymoon does.

Perhaps that is why I have always thought a honeymoon deserves to be designed differently.

It isn’t simply the holiday that comes after the wedding. It is the first great journey you take after deciding to build a life together. And, if you get it right, years later you won’t only remember where you stayed or what you saw. You will remember how it felt to suddenly have all that time — and an entire piece of the world — to yourselves.

When I look back at my own honeymoon, there are things I would change, of course. But there are a few decisions we made almost instinctively that I would make exactly the same way today.

And interestingly, many of them have become part of the way we think about honeymoons at Latitude Boreal.

Don’t be afraid to wait

We got married on September 30.

There was a pre-wedding celebration, the wedding itself and, the following day, another gathering with family and friends who had travelled from different places to celebrate with us.

It was three days of incredibly high emotion.

And then we did something slightly unexpected.

We went back to work.

We waited three weeks before leaving on our honeymoon.

At the time it probably didn’t sound particularly romantic. Looking back, it was one of the best decisions we made.

A wedding passes extraordinarily quickly. You spend months preparing for it, the days before are filled with nerves and anticipation, and then suddenly everyone you love is in one place and everything is happening at once.

We wanted to let that experience settle.

For three weeks, we returned to our normal lives. We worked. We talked endlessly about the wedding. We remembered tiny moments. We looked at photographs people sent us. We came down slowly from that extraordinary emotional high.

And then, when we were ready, we left.

The honeymoon didn’t feel like another item on the wedding schedule.

It felt like the beginning of our married life.

I still tell couples this today: don’t assume you need to leave the morning after your wedding.

Maybe you do.

But maybe the destination you dream about is better three weeks later. Maybe you need to recover. Maybe you want to enjoy that wonderful post-wedding bubble before replacing it immediately with another huge experience.

There is no rule.

The right honeymoon begins when you are ready to be completely present for it.

Decide how much time you have before deciding how far to go

Our honeymoon lasted 18 days.

That mattered because we wanted to travel far.

It sounds obvious, but I think couples sometimes choose the destination first and then try to squeeze it into the number of days they have.

I prefer to do the opposite.

Start with time.

How many days can you genuinely disappear for?

If you have eight days, I would rarely recommend spending a significant part of them crossing the world and recovering from jet lag.

If you have two or three weeks, suddenly we can be more ambitious.

We can go further.

We can change landscapes.

We can create different chapters within the same journey.

And, most importantly, we can leave space.

A honeymoon should never feel like a race to complete an itinerary.

You don’t have to love exactly the same things

Choosing a destination for two people isn’t always obvious.

One may dream of hiking through the Andes while the other imagines a beautiful beach and nothing scheduled before lunch. One might love cities and restaurants; the other, surfing, horses or wilderness.

That’s completely normal.

Over time, our worlds begin to overlap. We discover things through each other and become curious about what the other person loves.

So I don’t think a honeymoon should force you to choose between two personalities.

It should contain a little of both.

The best journeys find that balance — and often introduce you to something you didn’t know you would love.

I believe in honeymoons with two acts

If there is one idea from my own honeymoon that has stayed with me, it is this:

Move first. Then stop.

I love a first half with energy.

That could mean trekking, riding, surfing, kayaking or cycling.

Or it could simply mean discovering a great city — walking its neighbourhoods, eating somewhere wonderful, visiting galleries, learning its history, meeting people.

There should be curiosity. Movement. A sense that you are discovering somewhere together.

And then I like to change the rhythm completely.

The second half should be about staying.

Somewhere beautiful.

Somewhere surrounded by nature.

Somewhere that makes it very easy to forget what day it is.

Ideally, somewhere that isn’t constantly receiving people from outside — a private island, a remote property, a lodge surrounded by wilderness, a place where the landscape becomes your world for a few days.

Because this is where something interesting happens.

You stop travelling.

And you simply are.

The luxury of nowhere else to be

This is perhaps what I remember most clearly from my own honeymoon.

After travelling, exploring cities, driving, surfing and moving from one place to another, we spent the final part of our journey in two very remote properties surrounded by sea.

There wasn’t much we had to decide.

We could kayak.

Take a boat.

Swim.

Eat beautifully.

Read.

Spend hours on the beach.

Or do absolutely nothing.

And I remember how much we connected during those days.

Our world became very small.

Nature. The sea. The two of us.

Today our lives move incredibly quickly. There is always another message, another meeting, another commitment, another place we need to be.

That is why I think one of the greatest luxuries a honeymoon can offer has nothing to do with the size of a suite.

It is this:

Having nowhere else in the world you need to be.

No schedule.

No outside noise.

No reason to rush.

Just time.

And after the intensity of planning a wedding, there is something incredibly powerful about that.

How I would do it today in Latin America and the Caribbean

One of the things I love about designing journeys in this part of the world is the extraordinary contrast we can create without travelling across the globe.

Cities and wilderness. Mountains and sea. Movement and stillness.

Panama, Pacific wilderness & St. Barth

I love the idea of beginning with a few days in Panama City — architecture, restaurants and the energy of Casco Viejo — before disappearing to Islas Secas, a private archipelago in the Gulf of Chiriquí where nature and the Pacific take over.

For couples with more time, I would change the rhythm once again and finish in St. Barth: beautiful beaches, wonderful food and enough privacy to retreat into your own world.

Three very different energies:

City. Wilderness. Stillness.

Brazil: Rio & Trancoso

Brazil offers another beautiful contrast.

Start in Rio and let it be alive. Walk, eat, listen to music, spend time by the ocean and discover the city with someone who truly understands it.

Then head north to Bahia and slow everything down.

Trancoso gives you beautiful beaches, but also something I find equally important: a real sense of place.

The Quadrado, Bahian food, tropical vegetation, local artisans and properties that feel connected to their surroundings rather than separated from them.

It is relaxed, beautiful and full of character.

And, for me, that is far more interesting than simply finding the perfect beach.

And it doesn’t have to end by the sea

Not every honeymoon needs turquoise water.

Perhaps yours is Patagonia — days walking through enormous landscapes followed by evenings beside a fire.

Perhaps it is Peru, combining the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu with the Amazon.

Perhaps Ecuador and the Galápagos, where wildlife and exploration become part of the journey.

Because ultimately, the destination isn’t where we begin.

You are.

How we begin designing a honeymoon

When someone contacts us at Latitude Boreal about their honeymoon, we don’t begin by sending a list of hotels.

We begin with a conversation.

We want to understand how you travel, what excites each of you, how much time you have, the pace you enjoy and what would make this journey feel completely different from everyday life.

Sometimes couples arrive knowing exactly where they want to go. Sometimes they have two completely different ideas. And sometimes they simply tell us:

“We have three weeks. Surprise us.”

From there, we begin defining the dates, the rhythm, the destination, the experiences and the places to stay.

Only then do we build the journey.

Because a honeymoon should never feel as though it was designed for honeymooners.

It should feel as though it was designed for the two of you.

The first of many journeys

I sometimes think about our own honeymoon and how much life has happened since.

The places we have travelled.

The things we have discovered together.

The adventures that went perfectly and the ones that absolutely didn’t.

The family we have built.

The countless flights, roads, mountains, beaches, cities and dinners that have become part of our story.

And perhaps that is why honeymoons still feel so special to me.

You don’t know any of that yet.

You are standing at the very beginning.

There will hopefully be hundreds of journeys afterwards. Some enormous. Some very simple. Some with children. Some just the two of you. Some planned for months and others decided almost overnight.

But this one is different.

It is the first journey of the life you have just chosen to build together.

So don’t design it around what a honeymoon is supposed to look like.

Give yourselves time.

Choose somewhere that excites both of you.

Move.

Discover.

Then find somewhere beautiful enough to stop.

And for a little while, let the rest of the world disappear.

The journey of your lives is only just beginning.

— Sofia Mármol
Founder, Latitude Boreal