1. Procrastination
2. Priority
3. Planning
4. Pricing

P1 — Procrastination: Looked, but NOT BOOKED!!!

You have just about everything for your wedding planned and under deposit. Your wedding is one day; your honeymoon is one week or longer, and that's not booked. Why not? Why is there so much procrastination on booking your honeymoon? You're busy at work, too tired to look at all the brochures, gone back and forth on the Internet websites, and you're getting stressed.

You're procrastinating because you're overwhelmed by all the places and prices. Stop trying to handle this all on your own and contact the mid-Atlantic's foremost honeymoon planners, Beth and Jim, to help make this a smooth experience without all the headaches!

So here is a quick timetable for when to contact us:

If you are getting married in	You need to book in
- April-July	December-February
- August-October (very popular months!)	March-May
- November-December	June-August
- January-March	September-November

The exceptions to this rule: Major Holidays- President's Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Eve. On these EIGHT HOLIDAY WEEKENDS alone, over fifty percent of all weddings occur, so there's a huge surge on honeymoon travel, plus the normal holiday vacation travelers packing the airlines, nice hotels and activities. So book those holiday honeymoons at least SIX MONTHS AHEAD!

P2 - Priority: She wants a PERFECT 10 HONEYMOON

We always ask couples to rate the importance of their honeymoon trip versus just another vacation. Women, as a rule, prioritize it as either a 9 or 10, thus making it one of the most memorable trips they ever wish to take. Men, however, usually rate the priority of this trip between a 4-7, because it's "Just a vacation".

The women are right! Your honeymoon is NOT your family vacation, spring break week, backpacking jaunt through Europe's hostels, single's cruise, guys' cross country road trip, or beach house week with friends.

Your memorable honeymoon takes more care and time to plan in advance. If you've never met with a travel consultant before, this is the one time you need our services! So give your honeymoon a Priority 10 and contact us to get a Perfect 10 Honeymoon.

P3 - Planning: WHO you plan with is the MOST IMPORTANT STEP

The most important aspect of this trip is the planning. The right destination, hotel and room are the key to the entire honeymoon. Guys sometimes say to us, "Oh, anyplace or any room with the woman I love is OK with me." Your fiancée usually does not share that opinion. And she's right. The more romantic and tailored to couples' styles the destination, the hotel, and the room is, the more the two of you will enjoy the whole experience!

Imagine on graduation day if your parents gave you a $20 gift certificate to a local department store. It's your big day, and aren't you expecting something more special to celebrate this occasion? Or, if your boss took you out for a big promotion dinner and the limo dropped you off at the local fast food joint? Your parents love you, your boss appreciates you, but you see what's wrong with this picture. You want your honeymoon to be as special as the memories of your wedding day.

In the years of meeting with honeymoon couples, they tell us their friends and relatives' honeymoon horror stories, including:

"The hotel wasn't as nice as it looked on the Internet website." "The island wasn't as beautiful as it looked in the brochures." "The room we booked directly with the hotel was below standard." "Nobody told us it was going to rain all the time." "The cottage didn't look like the pictures." "Our Garden Room overlooked the parking lot." "The all-inclusive resort's restaurants were terrible." "The condo resort had screaming kids everywhere." "It was 95 degrees with no air conditioning." "The hotel was a 3-hour ride from the airport." "My best friend recommended it, but we hated it."

How do you avoid these unexpected surprises happening to you?

By meeting with a seasoned travel consultant who specializes in honeymoons and has personally been to these destinations, hotels, and restaurants over and over, and can truthfully tell you the straight scoop about each one of these - this is where Beth and Jim at Perfect Honeymoons & Holidays excel.

Beth has been to Hawaii 59 times, St. Lucia 28 times, Bermuda 22 times, Tahiti 8 times, Fiji 5 times, Italy and Greece over 50 times (she married a Greek-Italian gentleman she met on one of these trips), and every single Caribbean island that offers romance! When you talk with her, as many of her clients have written, she is like the walking computer of honeymoons. She knows which rooms are the most romantic, the quaint restaurants to go to, the most secluded beaches, and the spas where you can get a great massage

Jim, Beth's son, grew up traveling all over the world. He is an expert on Hawaii, Jamaica, Barbados, Anguilla, St. Barts, just about every other Caribbean island you can think of, plus Tahiti, Fiji, Costa Rica, Mexico, and the Florida Keys. Jim knows the great spots to go snorkeling, the local dive shops, where to go on a hiking trip through the rain forest, the great bars to hang out in at night, and where to rent a Jeep to go off on the beach.

Beth and Jim both say "The best way to plan a honeymoon is for both of you to meet us in person at our office for a free one-hour consultation. If not, the second best way is for one of us to have a one-hour teleconference with both of you. The least effective way is to use email for the initial appointment because the back and forth messaging will take longer than an hour."

We HIGHLY encourage you to follow these 10 STEPS to PERFECT HONEYMOON PLANNING:

Step 1: Step 1. Choose Perfect Honeymoons & Holidays for our longstanding reputation in the community for planning over 7,000 stylish honeymoons, and for our reliability and commitment to this community stretching back three decades. We're dedicated to being there for you from beginning to end.

Step 2: Contact us to set up an office consultation or teleconference appointment.

Step 3: Before we conference, fill out our honeymoon profile so that we may make the best use of your time!

Step 4: We meet or we teleconference with you. We prefer to meet in person for the initial consultation because we rely strongly on your reactions and body language. During your appointment, we may make suggestions for your honeymoon, or we may need to do some research and get back to you with suggestions.

Step 5: We can communicate from this point onward by phone, fax, or email with suggestions, proposals and prices.

Step 6: You say "Love It and Book It" You give us your deposit, either by phone, fax, email or, if you wish, in person. That's it.

Step 7: Final payment, depending on the destination, is normally due 60 or 45 days ahead of departure. You make your final payment by mail, phone, fax, email or in person.

Step 8: . 3-4 weeks after Final Payment your documents come to our office. We call you for your Wrap Up Appointment to review your documents and give you a 10-page Tip Sheet on your destination, and answer any final questions. Then you're off to a Perfect Honeymoon! (P.S., If you pick up your documents in person, we give you a Honeymoon Bon Voyage Gift Basket!)

Step 9: Our work does not end there. We're your support line the whole time you're on your trip. If there's an emergency or you need to make a change while on your trip, we're here to use our 30 years of contacts with the airlines and hotels to make sure that happens as smoothly as possible.

Step 10: You return from your perfect honeymoon. We call you to find out how your trip went and send you an evaluation. Our reputation as expert honeymoon travel planners is a result of listening to our couples from the planning stages to the very end of the trip.

P4 - Pricing: Good taste requires Good Budget

After years of planning perfect honeymoons, what is the one obstacle we encounter most? Your taste and style typically overstep your budget.

Does this mean that you're picking the destinations reserved for the impossibly rich and famous and that only Bill Gates or Tom Cruise could afford? No. Most couples have NO idea what a stylish honeymoon will cost, so about 60% of all couples tell us a budget that's low, because they have no frame of reference.

To guide you, please note:

1. Modern Bride Magazine says for the year 2001, the average couple taken from polling all 50 states spent $3,800 for a honeymoon.

2. The Washington metropolitan area (like New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco) is ABOVE average for salary, housing, restaurants, stores, and lifestyle. Our couples want an ABOVE average honeymoon.

3. The cost of a honeymoon trip for Washington area couples for 2001 ranged from

20% $3,000-$4,000
40% $4,000-$6,000
25% $6,000-$8,000
10% $8,000-$12,000
5% $12,000-$20,000

We get a lot of great couples in our office, the guys are driving SUV's, the ladies are driving nice cars. They've got good taste in the clothes they're wearing, they're living in nice neighborhoods, and they're well educated, and they naturally have great expectations for a stylish honeymoon.

The problem is, you need the budget to match your taste. This is not the time to cut corners. Even if your wedding is costing more than expected (and it usually will), don't take away from your honeymoon budget, otherwise your honeymoon will be a BIG letdown after your elegant wedding. Remember, a perfect honeymoon is an investment in the start of your life together.

Beth and Jim's motto is, "If you're driving a Honda or Toyota 4Runner, at least take the equivalent of that type of honeymoon, or one step above - a Lexus, BMW, Audi, or LandCruiser type of honeymoon." We plan stylish honeymoon getaways at competitive prices, and we look forward to planning your special trip!