Packing Tips for your Honeymoon

It's your honeymoon and you want to take everything you own – plus a few things you just bought. However, airline, tour, and cruise restrictions allow you only a limited amount of luggage. Plus, how fair is it to make your new spouse carry your steamer trunks all around the airport or train station? To avoid over-packing for your honeymoon, you need to have a plan. Consider the follow tips:

1. Plan for lost luggage. Make sure to pack a few things in a carry-on bag just in case your luggage is delayed a day or two. Lost luggage is a relatively rare occurrence considering all of the bags the airlines process each day, but a beach is not much fun without your bathing suit and buying what you need at your destination can eat into your travel funds. It's also not a bad idea to divide your things between your two suitcases – half of your clothes in one and half in the other. That way if one bag gets lost, you both will still have clothes to wear.

2. Consider Security Restrictions. Unfortunately, the times in which we live make airport security procedures a necessary part of traveling. Make sure you check with the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) in the United States and/or your airline carrier if traveling abroad for the latest requirements. Scan the list of prohibited items. Such seemingly innocuous items as a cigarette lighter or wine opener will get confiscated at the security checkpoint.

3. Remember the Essentials. First, make sure you have all of your travel documents: airlines tickets of e-ticket confirmation, passports, cruise or tour documents, hotel and rental car confirmations, and vaccination certificate (if required). Plan for the unexpected by making extra copies of your passport, travelers checks, itinerary, and other important papers and keep the extra copy away from the original.

4. Nice Things to Have. If you have a little extra room in your suitcase, consider taking a foreign phrase book or dictionary (if traveling overseas), a journal and pen to record this once-in-a-lifetime trip, a small battery-operated alarm clock – just in case the hotel's is absent or difficult to operate, a small sewing kit (if it includes scissors, pack in your checked luggage), Ziploc bags (for laundry, toiletries, and damp swimsuits, among other things), a small first aid kit, and/or an inflatable pillow for those long flights.

If you're the type that needs to record his trip on video or digital camera, by all means take your cameras. Just don't fall into the trap of viewing your honeymoon only from a viewfinder.

5. Pack your Love and your Patience. Planning a wedding can be stressful, even for the most even-tempered couples and no doubt you will be feeling the strain by the time you're ready to depart for your honeymoon. Add to this the inevitable stress of traveling and you have a recipe for a spat – or worse. Make up your mind now to give your new spouse the benefit of the doubt, if only for the duration of the honeymoon.

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