Real Member Stories

When you're a ghost hunter planning your honeymoon, the destination is obvious. The British Isles are known for their magic and mystery - romantic tales of knights and royal families, bloody battles, beheadings and torture techniques that stand your hair on end, fairies, kelpies, banshees, crop circles and the Loch Ness Monster. When your husband-to-be enthusiastically agrees that a 17-day tour of England, Scotland and Ireland sounds like the perfect getaway, ghosts and all, you know you're marrying someone who shares your sense of wonder and adventure.

If I had to describe our honeymoon in Costa Rica in two words, I would say "Sublime Nothing". Of course, our idea of a good vacation involves the luxury of not having to do anything at all. After 14-months of planning the wedding, on top of me finishing grad school and my husband starting a new job as a newly minted Patent Agent, we looked forward to our 7-days of nothing post-wedding. With an open agenda and a few books packed in for good measure, we set out to our honeymoon two days after the wedding ready to relax.

Traveler's Joy had it all. It was easy to navigate, required no setup charge and had a comparatively low fee. Only indulgences were registered for, from breakfasts at our hotels to gastronomic dinners. We searched the web and found canoe rides past landmarks and a hot air balloon above castles. We thought we had it covered, but didn't realize how big of a hit it would be. The demand to add more gifts on our Traveler's Joy registry grew as we kept receiving everything listed on our registry. It forced us to seek more ways to make our trip better! We went through every website and book we could get our hands on to find festivals, concerts and terrific restaurants to register for.

Honeymoons can be tough to plan – there are so many wonderful places to visit! We are both seasoned world travelers, and neither of us are the beach bum type, so when we were trying to decide on a place for our honeymoon, we wanted a place that offered hiking, history and adventure. While we were exploring our options, we realized that we always mentioned Ireland and how much we loved it, though we’d never been there together. With rich mythology, a lively culture, beautiful land and family roots for both of us, Ireland turned out to be the perfect spot to celebrate our new life together.

Overall, we did the trip the way we wanted to, and don’t have many regrets at all! It was all that we were hoping for, wishing for, and looking forward to – and Traveler’s Joy played a huge part in making that happen. All I can say is, thank goodness for digital cameras with lots and lots of available memory!

I’ll never forget the overwhelming heat on my face and shoulders, the crunch of red rock beneath my boots, or the burning sensation in my calves. What a relief to hit the trail, what a drastic change from sitting in a cubicle all day! The switchbacks seemed endless, but it seemed that a breeze would spring up at just the right moment to keep us going. I held tightly, unnecessarily tightly, to the heavy chain bolted into the rock along the ridge. Angel’s Landing trail at Zion National Park is one of the most difficult and most rewarding hikes I’ve ever experienced, and it was just one of many adventures to come.

Beijing welcomed us to the Country with a flurry of people. No matter the time of day, there were people going about their business everywhere. As the location of the upcoming 2008 Olympics, Beijing gave the impression as the host of a dinner party in which the guests have arrived too early. The pride of hosting the Olympics could be seen everywhere, but it was obvious that there was a lot left to be done.

My new husband and I stepped off the plane and were immediately slapped in the face by a cool breeze and then warmed by the sun. It had been along trip for the start of June 2007, across the country to Northern Virginia for our wedding for a week and then to Madrid where we caught a final flight to the exotic Canary Islands. I glanced at my husband to see his expression and was relieved to see him smiling back at me. We were here, finally, we had been looking forward to this for the past year and finally, we were here… Tenerife… the Canary Islands…Spain!

We came upon Traveler's Joy and the key to our dream trip. We were thrilled! And we loved the freedom Traveler's Joy gave us to invent the trip, and tell a story to our friends using the honeymoon description section.

There is no more romantic beautiful place to spend the first few days of your life as a married couple. There is nothing like Hawaii, there is something beautiful about going to sleep with the lanai doors open, hearing the ocean lap over and over on the beach.

We would definitely recommend New York to other honeymooners who want to experience an eclectic city with so much to offer each and every day and night... you'll have a hard time trying to take it all in!

Boarding the plane, I sat and thought about all we had done. Now that I am back to work and typing this, reminiscing, I can see myself lying on the beach in Grand Turk or walking down the cobblestone road in Puerto Rico or even running to catch the subway!

It helped so much that we used Traveler's Joy as our primary registry. I lived in my house for five years and did not need any of the "traditional" wedding gifts, so a honeymoon registry was the perfect registry for us.

Our favorite activity on our dream honeymoon, thanks to our Traveler's Joy, was swimming with the dolphins. This was definitely an experience that our budget definitely would not have allowed without our friends and families generous gifts through our registry.

Our favorite activity has to be between deep sea fishing and surfing. My brother has a fishing boat so the sea was ours for as long as we wanted. It was such a beautiful day and the waters were amazing!

I would recommend Traveler's Joy to any couple who desires a nontraditional registry, loves to travel, and is willing to plan their honeymoon well in advance. Because of the necessary planning to create our registry, our trip went much more smoothly that it would have normally.

Mad dashes through foreign airports are a good part of what makes the memories last, and we would definitely recommend the Croatian Coast to anyone who wants Mediterranean views with a unique and historic culture. Thank you Traveler's Joy for helping to make this possible!

For those looking for more excitement, Turks and Caicos has its share of nightlife and entertainment. We walked down to Beaches Resort one day and there were activities galore.

We are certainly grateful for the existence of such a registry and without a doubt, we would recommend other couples to use Traveler's Joy, and visit the Hawaiian Islands!

To all honeymooners with small budgets: Tahiti is within reach! The key is to keep the trip short and use Traveler's Joy!

Many of the people we encountered were implants from other parts of the United States, and it is absolutely obvious why they left the mainland for Hawaii. The islands are captivating, and even after all that we have seen in the world, did not fail to live up to my very own "fairytale" honeymoon dreams - which Traveler's Joy helped to make possible.

We had so much fun that we started to plan our next trip to Costa Rica before we were back on the plane - perhaps our one year anniversary will bring us back to this fascinating country. What a great honeymoon adventure!

The view from our bungalow was the island of Bora Bora since the hotel sits on a motu across the lagoon. The view was breath taking. One morning we ordered our breakfast delivered by outrigger canoe. It arrived on time and the Tahitian waitress put out an amazing spread complete with decorative flowers.

What did we love? The spa, the watersports, the dining venues, the drinking venues and the fact that we had a butler assigned to our room.

Anyone traveling to Tahiti knows in advance that it is an expensive place to visit. The rooms, food and tours all add up quickly. Traveler's Joy allowed us to do more.

We would definitely recommend using a honeymoon registry to others as it really helped us make our dream honeymoon a reality. We loved our cruise and are thankful to our Family, Friends, and Traveler's Joy for making it happen!

Our honeymoon was perfect. The only thing we would have changed if we could is extended our stay for another week...or month.

As we started thinking about our honeymoon, we realized we wanted to make it just as special and memorable as our wedding day. We thought it would be great to minimize the "stuff" factor.

Traveler’s Joy was a little known flawless diamond in a mountain of “cabinet filling” registries... a unique alternative to impersonal cash gifts.

We registered for every one of our excursions, which turned out to be a very wise decision! This enabled us to see and do so many activities without constantly worrying about the credit card bills piling up.

We participated in a 7 day cruise around the Hawaiian Islands with Norwegian Cruise Lines. We chose Hawaii because it was a destination that both of us had been dying to see.

Our wedding budget was on the economical side and after months of being frugal and thrifty in our planning, the last thing we wanted to worry about on our honeymoon was money.

Choosing our honeymoon destination was quite a challenge, as we had just bought a house, and finances were tight. We wanted to do something a little more memorable than the typical beach honeymoon, and so after much deliberation, we settled on Charleston, S.C. as our destination.

Our helicopter tour on the big island of Hawai'i was one of the highlights of our trip, complete with a bird's eye view of both fuming volcano crater and lava flow not far from the pit.

Over all our honeymoon was exactly what we wanted. We spent approximately $3,500, plus received $2,460 from our Traveler’s Joy registry, which allowed us to pay off some of the trip, go on excursions, get pampered, and upgraded to first class (using miles and fee).

We never would have been able to make our dream honeymoon a possibility without Traveler's Joy. The cruise and excursions would have cost us about $5000, but our friends and family members helped us to make our dream a reality.

The long and short of the story is this – our friends found Traveler’s Joy on the web, compared it to other honeymoon registry sites and found this one to be the highest quality and value.

Traveler's Joy was a great addition and folks loved giving these items rather than just cash. We even sent postcards as a thank you to those who bought items off the registry to show them what they had bought.