A cautionary tale for you ladies. When the missus and I booked our honeymoon, we checked the expiration dates of our passports, and thought we were good to go.

However, in reading the fine print in the various Tahiti travel guides, we noticed that French Polynesia requires passports to have expiration dates no less than 6 months after your trip.

Well, we fly out of Tahiti on 4/2. And guess when my passport expires? Yup, 10/2. Theoretically, I would be safe, but why risk it. Thus, we decided to go ahead and renew (note I say “we,” since it was the missus who told me to).

Well (again), it’s been a heckuva long time since I did anything passport-related, and it was news to me that renewing a passport cost $75, plus it cost me $8 to take two passport photos. Good grief!

I know what you’re thinking — this handsome young man sure is a cheapskate, given that he’s going to Tokyo and Bora Bora for his honeymoon. To that, I say you’re right. I’m handsome, and young, and yes, I’m cheap. Renewing my passport shouldn’t cost $83! Plus the postage. Never forget the postage.

Here’s to hoping that this application and my current passport doesn’t get lost in the mail.

What’s a good amount/percentage to budget for the honeymoon? The missus-to-be and I have to date focused mostly on the wedding itself, and while we had some ideas on where we wanted to have rough, romantic, just-tied-the-knot sex, we didn’t really look into it. We’ve started to, however, and it’s a bit crazy, money-wise.

We’re paying for our wedding pretty much ourselves, and since we aren’t Google stockholders from early IPO days, or Citigroup bonus recipients, we aren’t exactly rolling in dough. However, we want to have a really nice honeymoon and the places we’re thinking about (Tahiti, Fiji, Maldives, Tokyo, etc.) are pretty expensive.

So last week, we sat down and went through our budgets again. We tried to calculate what we could *potentially* afford, how much in “emergency” money we wanted to not touch at all, and how much each idea would generally cost. Thankfully (because we are truly blessed), most of the ideas are within reach, partly thanks to the time of year we’d be traveling. Still, the whole budgeting process made me wonder how much people typically spend on their own honeymoons.

For those ladies in the audience that got a ring put on y’all, where did you go on your honeymoon and did you have a set budget when you planned it? Any regrets? Anything you would’ve done differently? Any advice you want to share with me?

For those ladies that don’t have a ring on the finger yet — really? You’re reading this blog already? Geez, you’re anxious.