Go on a buddymoon!

What? Honeymoon and friends? The trip of my lifetime with my one and only love and....other people?!
If this is your first reaction when reading the header, then you have not heard of this new trend, Buddymoon (= honeymoon with your buddies).
 A fast growing trend around the world with wedding planners and agencies jumping on the bandwagon.

There are several reasons why people might want to share their honeymoon with other people but usually they follow a destination weddings. The desire for the couple to spend time with the people who have travelled miles to the destination of the wedding and want to show them around their birthplace or want to make it easy for people to combine a little holiday with the wedding. It is a lovely way to say: thank you for being here, we will try to make it special and take care of everything.

Especially for destinations that are far away, where just taking a long weekend is not feasable because of the length of the flight.
Case in point are my friends Ernesto and Andrea who got married in Costarica last year and organise a buddy-moon for a group of friends who traveled from London to celebrate with them. We were about 15 (with some additions and losses over time) of more than 10 nationalities and age range between 25 and 45.

The couple booked two beautiful villas in two different locations and we rented cars to travel around the country. We visited Tamarindo, where we stayed in a stunning Balinese-style villa with 7 bedrooms and infinity pool overlooking the ocean. We spent time at the beach and a lot of time in the villa. Especially at night, when we didn’t even have to go out. We could happily party given the amount of people and the variety of backgrounds.

The other half of the holiday we spent in Manuel Antonio National Park. Here the villa was a three stories modern building nested in the jungle, again with ocean views and infinity pool. Monkeys used to visit to eat our papayas and wake us up every morning with toucans flying around.

The couple had visited the places ahead of the wedding to make sure they had enough for us to do. They had tried a few restaurants to make sure they had enough space to host a big group.

One night was spent singing everyones’s national anthem (dont ask!) and one (the Oscar’s night) awarding each one for their special talent - the prize was a hug from the groom’s brother, Oscar.And one afternoon we serenaded the couple with a Mariachi band on the beach.

All in all it was one of the best trips I have ever done.
I thought it was loverly for Andrea and Ernesto to spend the days after their wedding to celebrate with us. They wanted to show us their beautiful country and their appreciation for everyone who made the trip from so far away....In return hopefully they enjoyed the company and they didn’t miss their privacy too much! In any case from my side, I didn’t want it to end!