The LGBTQ+ Honeymoon Planning Guide: Where Romance Meets Real-World Comfort
You made it through the wedding. The photos were taken, somebody cried during the vows after insisting they absolutely would not, and there's a decent chance at least one relative did something you'll be talking about for years.
Now you get to the honeymoon.
This is supposed to be the easy part, right? Pick somewhere beautiful, book a great hotel, eat too much, drink something expensive near a body of water and take 600 photos you'll eventually narrow down to twelve.
Except LGBTQ+ couples know there's sometimes another question sitting quietly underneath all the fun ones - Are we actually going to feel comfortable there?
Not whether you're technically allowed to visit. Not whether you'll probably be fine. And not whether the resort puts a rainbow on Instagram every June. I mean comfortable.
Can you hold hands walking back from dinner without thinking about it? Can you casually say “my wife” or “my husband” without doing that tiny mental calculation first? Is checking into a hotel together going to be completely unremarkable, the way it should be?
Most importantly, can you relax?
Because nothing really kills the honeymoon mood like lying in bed at 11:47 p.m. Googling local laws.
There really isn't an “LGBTQ+ honeymoon”
There are LGBTQ+ people going on honeymoons, and that's an important distinction.
One couple wants ten days in Italy eating pasta, drinking wine and wandering through old cities with no intention of setting an alarm. Another wants Costa Rica and will voluntarily zip-line before breakfast. Some people could spend all day in museums. Others want to see the inside of exactly zero museums unless there's air-conditioning and a bar.
Then there are the couples where one person wants adventure and the other wants a private plunge pool and limited interaction with humanity.
Those are fun.
It's also why those lists of the “10 Best LGBTQ+ Honeymoon Destinations” aren't especially helpful after a certain point. Your sexuality doesn't tell me whether you're going to love Lisbon. You do.
So instead of only asking, Where is LGBTQ+ friendly?, I'd rather ask:
Where can you comfortably be yourselves and have the honeymoon you actually want?
We need both answers.
“LGBTQ-friendly” only tells me so much
It's a phrase that gets used pretty loosely.
A country may have strong legal protections while certain areas are considerably more conservative. A city may have a thriving LGBTQ+ community, but the secluded resort two hours away can feel very different.
And a hotel can call itself inclusive because someone in marketing knows how to add a rainbow to a social media post. That's nice. I want to know what happens when you actually show up.
That's where travel planning gets more nuanced than looking at a destination on paper. I'm thinking about the country, certainly, but also the region, the neighborhood, the hotel, transportation, the experiences you're considering and what you're likely to encounter while you're there.
After all, you're not spending your honeymoon inside a country's legislation. You're spending it in hotel lobbies, restaurants, taxis, little towns, museums, beaches and neighborhoods.
For me, safety is the baseline. Comfort is the goal. And feeling genuinely welcome is even better.
You don't have to turn being romantic into a statement
This is one of those things straight couples rarely have to think about. Sometimes very ordinary honeymoon stuff can come with an extra calculation for LGBTQ+ couples.
Maybe you want the ridiculously romantic hotel. Maybe you want rose petals on the bed. Maybe you want the couples massage. Maybe you want everyone to know you're newlyweds because you are fully committed to seeing how many complimentary desserts this situation can produce.
You should be able to enjoy that.
You shouldn't have to wonder whether telling the front desk you're on your honeymoon is going to make the interaction weird. And you definitely shouldn't have to spend your honeymoon presenting yourselves as two travel buddies who coincidentally booked one bed.
At the same time, there's nothing wrong with wanting privacy.
Some couples are comfortable almost anywhere. Others would much rather choose places where they know they can completely drop their guard.
There's no right answer here. It's your vacation, it's probably costing a decent amount of money, and you get to decide what kind of environment will actually let you enjoy it.
I care a lot about the hotel
Destinations get most of the attention when people plan honeymoons. I tend to obsess over the hotel too. Not because it has to be the fanciest option. In fact, I'd often take a gorgeous 22-room boutique hotel over a sprawling five-star resort with six pools and a lobby roughly the size of Rhode Island.
The hotel matters because you're going to spend more time there than you think.
It's where you wake up on your first morning. It's where you come back sunburned, exhausted and slightly overfed. It's where you have a drink before dinner and where, at some point, one of you is going to suggest a 3 p.m. nap despite having paid a great deal of money to travel internationally.
It's also where you'll walk up to the front desk together and say, “We're here on our honeymoon.”
That shouldn't feel brave.
So yes, I care about the beautiful room and the view. But I'm also looking at the personality of the hotel, the location, privacy, atmosphere, how couples are welcomed and whether the place actually fits the way you travel.
The prettiest hotel on Instagram isn't automatically the best one for you. Instagram has some explaining to do on this subject.
Sometimes the destination you love isn't the right destination for this trip
This is where things can get frustrating.
There are places where LGBTQ+ couples can travel without giving any of this much additional thought. There are places where things are more nuanced. And occasionally there's a destination that's undeniably beautiful where my advice is still going to be, “I don't think I'd choose it for your honeymoon.”
That's hard when you've had a place saved for years.
I don't believe in being alarmist about travel, but I'm also not going to wave away legitimate concerns because the resort has an infinity pool that photographs well.
Local laws matter. Cultural attitudes matter. What's happening on the ground right now matters. And all of those things can change, which is why advice from a blog post written five years ago isn't necessarily enough.
But legal status is only part of the picture.
Can we travel there? and Is this where we want to spend our honeymoon? are different questions.
I'm much more interested in the second one.
Once we've handled that, let's get back to the fun part
Because comfort shouldn't take over the whole planning process. Once we know where you'll feel good traveling together, I want to know what kind of honeymoon sounds good to you.
Maybe it's Italy for pasta, history, beautiful hotels and the dangerous realization that apparently every afternoon of your life should have included an Aperol Spritz.
Maybe it's Portugal for incredible food, wine, coastline and streets that looked significantly flatter on Google Maps.
Maybe Hawaii gives you exactly the right combination of beaches, hiking, great food and doing absolutely nothing.
Maybe you're the Costa Rica couple: wildlife, jungle, beaches and the opportunity to discover that one spouse has dramatically overstated the other's enthusiasm for suspension bridges.
France can turn perfectly reasonable people into someone with very strong opinions about butter.
And then there's somewhere like the Seychelles, where the whole point may be privacy, extraordinary beaches and forgetting what day it is.
That's the part of honeymoon planning I love. We're not just looking for somewhere that will tolerate you. We're trying to find the place you see and immediately think "Oh, that's us".
Please don't turn your honeymoon into a work conference
You know the itinerary.
Breakfast at 8. Museum at 9. Tour at 11. Lunch at 1. Another tour at 2:30. Cultural experience at 4. Back to the hotel at 6. Cocktails at 7. Dinner at 8. Collapse at 10.
You have successfully created a business trip with better wine.
You just got married. Leave yourselves some room.
Sleep late one morning. Change your mind about something. Walk into the restaurant you noticed yesterday instead of the one you researched six months ago. Go back to the hotel because suddenly the pool sounds much better than another museum.
If you're having a wonderful time somewhere, stay.
Some of the best travel memories come from things nobody scheduled, and good planning doesn't prevent those moments. It gives them somewhere to happen.
Before you book anything, talk about how you actually travel
Obviously, talk about the budget. Please talk about the budget. But don't stop there.
Talk about mornings. Does one of you wake up at 6:30 ready to seize the day while the other considers conversation before 9 a.m. an act of aggression?
Talk about food. Is dinner one of the main events of the day, or is food mostly what you consume between the things you came to see?
How do you feel about crowds? Museums? Beaches? Long drives? Changing hotels?
And what exactly does “adventure” mean in your relationship? One person's adventure is kayaking through a sea cave. Another person's is ordering something they can't pronounce. This stuff matters more than people realize.
One of you may be imagining four countries in twelve days while the other has been picturing the same breakfast table overlooking the sea for an entire week.
Neither version is wrong. It's just much better to discover that difference at home than while dragging two suitcases through a European train station.
Your honeymoon doesn't have to prove anything
It doesn't need to be adventurous enough, luxurious enough, exotic enough, Instagrammable enough or even “LGBTQ+ enough.” It just needs to feel like you.
Maybe that's Paris. Maybe it's Patagonia. Maybe it's a villa in Bali. Maybe it's driving through Scotland while it rains for six days straight and somehow loving every minute of it.
Years later, you probably won't remember what time the dinner reservation was. You'll remember the restaurant. You may forget the name of the street where you got lost, but you'll remember getting lost. And half the things you carefully put on the itinerary will eventually blur together while some completely unplanned moment becomes the story you keep telling.
That's the part I'm after.
Because this is supposed to be your honeymoon
You shouldn't spend it wondering whether the person beside you is welcome. But I don't think you should have to settle for a trip that's merely safe, either.
I want you to get the spectacular hotel. The ridiculous view. The dinner you're somehow still talking about on your fifth anniversary. The morning when breakfast turns into lunch because neither of you feels any particular need to go anywhere.
And hopefully somewhere around day four, you'll look at each other and have that conversation people always have on a really good trip “Could we live here?” Probably not.
You have jobs. And mail. And there's a good chance the logistics of moving permanently to a tiny Italian village have not been thoroughly considered. But for a few minutes, you get to imagine it.
That's the kind of honeymoon worth planning. You don't need to have the destination figured out yet. In fact, sometimes it's better if you don't. Tell me a little about the two of you, how you like to travel and what you've been imagining. We'll start there.
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