My Honeymoon Shortlist Is Still Three. No Apologies.

Everyone has an opinion about the honeymoon. Mi mamá thinks it should be Europe — "algo clásico, Sofía, something with a train." My madrina (who, for the record, has already assigned herself three jobs nobody asked her to do) has been sending me Maldives overwater-bungalow TikToks since January. Mateo, being Mateo, said "wherever makes you happy, mi amor" and then went back to his AutoCAD drawings. ¡Increíble! The man is constitutionally incapable of stress, and I am constitutionally incapable of making this decision before I am absolutely ready.

So here is where we are, six months into planning a fall 2027 wedding: the venue shortlist is still three boutique resorts in the Riviera Maya, the honeymoon shortlist is still three destinations, and I am, de verdad, not sorry about either. The wedding industry has a very specific timeline it wants you to follow — book the venue, lock the photographer, confirm the honeymoon, all before the ink is dry on the engagement announcement. Pero yo no funciono así. I've been to enough places to know that a rushed decision is a regretted one, and a honeymoon is not a decision I'm making because a travel agent's calendar has a deadline.

What I will tell you is that the three options are wildly different from each other, each one says something specific about what kind of couple Mateo and I are on a given Tuesday, and narrowing to one feels like closing a door I'm not ready to close. La verdad, that's the whole story. But since you're here and I'm here and we might as well talk about it — let me walk you through exactly where the shortlist stands, why each one is still on it, and what it is actually going to take to get me off the fence.

The Three Destinations Still on the Board (and Why None of Them Have Lost Yet)

Option one is Japan — specifically a ryokan route through Kyoto and the Kii Peninsula, with a few nights in Tokyo on either end. Mateo has never been, which is, honestly, a significant factor. There is something about watching the person you love encounter a place for the first time that is — bueno, it's a different kind of magic than going somewhere together that you both already know. I've been to Tokyo twice for luxesofia, but never slow, never without a content schedule, never without checking my phone every forty minutes. The idea of a ryokan in the mountains of Wakayama with no agenda and no deliverables makes me feel something I can only describe as paz profunda. The estimated cost for sixteen nights, business class both ways from Mexico City, and a mix of ryokan and boutique hotels in Tokyo: somewhere around $18,000 USD — and that number has not scared me off yet.

Option two is Morocco — Marrakech into the Atlas Mountains and then a few nights in a riad in the Drâa Valley. This one is the most visually arresting shortlist option, amiga, and I say that as someone who has been accused of making decisions based entirely on aesthetics. The terracotta and the tilework and the light in those riads at sunset? It maps almost perfectly onto our wedding color palette of terracotta, sand, and deep ink blue. Mateo pointed that out, which surprised me because he usually leaves the visual commentary to me. Sixteen nights here runs closer to $14,500 USD — more efficient, but the logistics of getting there from Mexico City are genuinely complicado: two connections minimum, no direct routing that doesn't add a full day of travel.

Option three is the one people don't expect: a slow road trip through southern Chile and into Argentine Patagonia. No ryokan, no riad — just a rental 4x4, a tent for two nights in Torres del Paine, and a sequence of small lodges I've been bookmarking for three years. This one is the least "Instagram honeymoon" of the three, which is maybe why it keeps surviving every round of cuts. It is also the one Mateo lights up about most visibly, which I have noted and am processing. Sixteen nights here, including two internal flights and mid-range lodge accommodation: approximately $12,000 USD. The most grounded option, literally and figuratively.

Why I'm Not Collapsing the Shortlist Just Because Everyone Else Is Ready for Me To

Here's the thing nobody tells you about planning a wedding when you already travel constantly for work: the honeymoon is the only part of this entire process where no one can actually pressure me into a timeline. The venue has deposit deadlines. The photographer has availability windows. The invitation suite from our Oaxaca letterpress studio needs a final headcount before they'll confirm the order. Everything has a clock on it — todo tiene una fecha límite — except this. And I am choosing to treat that as a gift rather than a problem.

I've written before about what it actually means to plan a honeymoon when you've already been to most of the obvious places, and the core of it still stands: the goal is not a destination, it's a register. What kind of trip do we want this to be? Adventure-forward? Deeply restful? Culturally overwhelming in the best way? The honest answer is that Mateo and I want different things on different days, and that's not a problem to solve, cariño — it's just information I need before I book seventeen nights of something that only works if we're in the same mood about it.

There's also the practical reality that the honeymoon and the wedding trip are genuinely not the same thing, and I think a lot of people collapse them without realizing it. Our guests are already navigating flights to the Riviera Maya — that's a destination wedding in every sense of the word. The honeymoon needs to be something entirely separate, a different energy, a different pace. ¡Qué importante! If I pick Morocco and Mateo's still recovering from three days of hosting ninety guests in the Tulum heat, the riad is going to feel like a consolation prize. The sequencing matters. The recovery time between the wedding and departure matters. None of that is figured out yet, so the shortlist stays at three.

What Would Actually Make Me Pick One (An Honest Accounting)

Mateo asked me last week, very calmly, what it would take. Not in a pressuring way — he said it the way he says most things, like a question he's genuinely curious about, sin urgencia. And I sat with it for a few days because la verdad is that I wasn't sure. Here is what I came up with: I will make the call when the wedding venue is confirmed and I can feel the full shape of the week. Right now, with the resort shortlist still open, I can't visualize the end of the wedding day clearly enough to know what I need the morning after. Once I know which property, which beach, which specific version of that week — then I'll know whether I want to decompress in a Kyoto onsen, get lost in a Marrakech souk, or drive a 4x4 into Patagonian wind. Those are three very different emotional sequels to the same opening chapter.

There's also the registry question, which I have been avoiding with Olympic-level dedication. The distinction between the guests' destination wedding experience and the actual honeymoon matters here too — if I'm going to build any kind of honeymoon fund component into our registry, I need to know what I'm raising money toward. Japan at $18,000 is a different ask than Patagonia at $12,000. ¡Ay, los números! I'm not going to ask people to contribute to a line item I haven't committed to yet. That feels, de verdad, backwards.

So the shortlist stays at three, amiga. Renata, our wedding planner, has stopped asking. My madrina has accepted it (after a very long WhatsApp voice note that I listened to at 1.5x speed). Mateo thinks it's "very on-brand" for me, which is either a compliment or a very loving observation about my decision-making process — probably both. The honeymoon will get decided when it gets decided, and it will be vale la pena, whichever direction we go. That much I am completely sure about.

Bride in progress, amor en construcción.
— Sofía

Bride in progress, amor en construcción.
— Sofía