We'll get there fast and then we'll take it slow

Once we crunched some numbers, it became apparent that dream destinations like the Seychelles, Maldives, Fiji and French Polynesia were out. The airfare to these gorgeous spots ($1k+/person) coupled with 12 hours plus of flight time was a double whammy. My inner bride was bummed. In my head I'd always pictured a honeymoon as a luxurious, secluded beach retreat with fantastic food and plenty of free activities.

Refusing to scale back on the quality of the resort or length of stay, we turned to nearer beachy spots... and our travel agent. Running with a budget number supplied by Mr. P (much less than I thought we should spend), she asked what I thought of Panama. My mind was truly blank. All I could think of was, "A man, a plan, a canal - Panama??"

source
That night I pleaded my budget case with Mr. P. No Panama, please. But there was no way would we get anything honeymoon-worthy for 7 nights including food and airfare for two! We needed to bump the budget up while simultaneously knocking the flight time down around 6 hours (or within the bounds of my lovely illustration below). Losing a precious vacation day traveling = bad all around.

(getting creative with maps)
What now? We agreed to skip anywhere we'd already been - together or apart. There're too many places to see without repeating. That ruled out Mexico, the Dominican Republic and British Virgin Islands (BVI). But mentioning the BVI got Mr. P reminiscing about his sailing trip there almost 15 years ago. He felt it was a beautiful destination with a reasonable travel time and close to the proposed budget. And all the things to do...

- Sailing: Isn't the water ridiculous?!

source
- Remember this photo from the last post? It's The Baths on Virgin Gorda, one of the biggest draws for our BVI trip!

source
- Scuba/snorkeling: Can, can, can, can I go now???

source
Sold! We wasted no time emailing our travel agent. Up next, a handful of BVI resorts for our consideration...

(He's gonna kill me, but the post title was inspired by Mr. P's impromptu singing of the Beach Boys' "Kokomo." I pointed out that BVI is nowhere in the song; however, he did not care.)

What was your honeymoon criteria? Would you honeymoon in a location you've visited before?