Honeymoons are often one of the greatest memories in any couples life. Paying for it is not. I firmly believe that you can go farther than you expected in a better class of travel than you would dream of if you simply take advantage of all the miles and points floating around.
We are having our official wedding in London September of this year. For our honeymoon we wanted to venture back to our favorite spot, Rio De Janeiro and expand further into South America including Buenos Aires and parts of Uruguay. Living in New York, wedding aside you can see that this would cost a f**king fortune. Without spending a fortune its all happening.
I believe in financial independence and in planning honeymoons it really helps. My wife and I each maintain our own accounts and doing so allows us to collect double the points and miles. All of our wedding and honeymoon flights will be in Virgin Upper Class, British Airways Club World and American Business Class respectively and we snagged all of these using the sign up bonuses from just a few well timed credit card offers. Below you will find a break down of the numbers and suggestions for you to do the same regardless of where you want to go and how.
We each signed up for 3 credit cards over the course of the year giving us 120,000 points or more per person and turned them into 150,000 miles or more per person. Together we netted over 300,000 miles, enough for three international Business Class segments each!
Gib: American Express Platinum (40,000 Amex Points), Chase Sapphire Preferred (60,000 Chase Points), Virgin Atlantic World Elite Mastercard (20,000 Virgin Atlantic Miles).
Laura: American Express Premier Rewards Gold (50,000 Amex Points), Chase Sapphire Preferred (60,000 Chase Points), British Airways Visa Signature Card (50,000 British Airways Miles).
New York to London Virgin Atlantic Upper Class: we needed 40,000 Virgin Atlantic Miles each for Virgin Atlantic Upper Class (click for review) tickets. I used 20,000 miles from My Virgin Atlantic World Elite Mastercard bonus and transferred 15,000 American Express membership Rewards points during the 1.35x transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic to reach 40,000. Laura used 30,000 American Express Membership Rewards Points during the 1.35x Virgin Atlantic Transfer Bonus to reach 40,000.
London to Rio De Janeiro British Airways Club World: we needed 60,000 miles each to fly in British Airways Club World which is their version (click for picture) of Business Class. We both liquidated virtually all of our Chase Sapphire Preferred Ultimate Rewards Points to book these flights getting us to Rio.
Rio De Janeiro to New York American Airlines Business Class: We need 50,000 British Airways Avios each to fly American Airlines Business Class home. After using 15,000 American Express Membership Rewards Points I had 25,000 left and was able to make it an even 30,000 after a few months of spending. Once I had my 30,000 Points I transferred them out of American Express and into British Airways during their 1.4x transfer to British Airways bonus which netted me 42,000 British Airways Miles. Laura signed up for the British Airways Visa Signature card offering a 50,000 point bonus. Over the course of a couple more months I was able to transfer over more Chase Ultimate Rewards points to bring us to the grand total of 100,000 mile to get us home.
We have chosen to really push the boat out and use all of our miles to fly in a class of travel we could not otherwise afford to make things extra special. If you are planning a honeymoon and don’t care about flying up front your miles will in general get you twice as far or cost half as as much as they did us, however you see it.
Planning our honeymoon and executing this plan was one of the great joys I have had and I would be more than happy to help anyone looking for some advice and tips on how to stretch their points and miles to take them on the trip of their dreams. email me! godsavethepoints@gmail.com
