(Closed) Honeymoon booked and MAJOR fail!

• MrsJoyful80
• 5 years ago

• Wedding: June 2012

Been there–done that.

It will be crazy but with a little luck and LOTS of caffeine you can do it!

🙂

• fishbone
• 5 years ago

• Wedding: September 2011

We travel overseas about 4-6 times a year and never take a day off between coming home and going back to work. I think the most painful itinerary was flying Auckland–>Sydney->Vancouver, landing Vancouver at ~8am, crashing out at the airport Fairmont (gorgeous hotel) till around 9 pm then Vancouver->Toronto on a red-eye->DC.  Landed in DC around 9am, drove home and fired up my laptop to start the workday.

The first day back really isn’t so bad. It’s the second day that can be a killer, especially coming from Europe.

• pinkshoes
• 5 years ago

• Wedding: June 2011

Yeah, all the time.  I never factor in a ‘resting’ day for my vacations and maximize my time away which means coming back one day and going right back to work the next day.  Its totally normal for me. 

• Flippy2013
• 5 years ago

• Wedding: November 1999

I have had to present at conferences completely jetlagged!  What I will say is it is FAR easier to go east to west than vice versa.  So I don’t know if this is better, but you’ll probably feel a lot worse at the beginning of the honeymoon.  It still is gonna suck though, but you only get to go on one honeymoon, so it’s worth having a couple bum days at work!  I bet the little kids won’t even notice!

This is why god invented coffee!!!  Good luck!

• GreenEyedMoon
• 5 years ago

• Wedding: January 2012

When I was living as an English teacher in extremely rural Japan, I went home to visit my friends one summer.  I had a great time, ran around like a chicken with its head cut off for two weeks barely slept at all… and then headed back to Japan.  After flying for approximately twenty-two hours including layovers, I arrived back in the country in the afternoon of August 5th, but it was still a huge trip to get from Osaka to my island… and I had to work on August 6th.  It was vital that I be there because another nearby island was getting a new English teacher that day, and as the person most fluent in both Japanese and English anywhere in the area, I had to be there to act as translator.

As soon as I got through customs at the airport, I ran as fast as I could to the train and took a series of local and bullet trains to get home.  I ended up in the port town closest to my island at 12:30 in the morning on the 6th.

Now, remember how I said it was extremely rural where I was?  Well, there weren’t any hotels anywhere in the area that were still open and accepting customers that late.  So I left the train station, went down to the port, found a nice bench, and lied down.  That’s where I got my approximately four hours of sleep that night… though it wasn’t really sleep at all.

At oh-dear-God-that’s-early in the morning, I got up, ran to buy my ferry ticket, quickly changed into work-appropriate clothing in the port restroom, and then hopped on the boat.  Forty-five minutes later, we docked not at my island, but at the big one nearby that had a road that connected to the (other) mainland.

It was there that my supervisor met me (he had come over to the island from another ferry just a few minutes before), and we packed my stuff into the trunk and then drove two hours south to the little regional airport where we were meeting the new teacher.  Thus, immediately after travelling/sleeping on a bench outside for approximately forty-three hours, I went to work and spent the rest of the day as both tour guide and translator.

It will suck to get back from your honeymoon and then go back to work, but it is doable!  Like PPs said, caffeine will be your friend.

• kate02121
• 5 years ago

• Wedding: August 2012

@GreenEyedMoon:  Haha o my gosh. I can say that I’ve rarely if ever been so impressed. You poor thing!

OP, you’ll be fine! I second that it will be the next day that will be toughest but just try to get back on your time zone as quickly as possible, and get through the week to the weekend where you can recover. You’ll be ok!

We get home from Africa for our HM on Labor Day evening and go back to work the next day, but after reading all your stories, I don’t even feel slightly bad for myself. 

• MsVoyageur
• 5 years ago

• Wedding: November 2012

Hahaha we’re going on a 16-day honeymoon to Australia and New Zealand, and return on November 22nd at 3 PM. I have to go back to work on November 23rd, and work that day and the next two days until we have our first weekend home. We are going to be SO TIRED and SO JETLAGGED, plus we are moving in together right when we get married, so all of my boxes of stuff will be dropped off in his extra bedroom the week of the wedding. Anyways, we just laugh whenever we talk about the honeymoon because the timing is so terrible! But we think it’s worth it 😉

• MsVoyageur
• 5 years ago

• Wedding: November 2012

P.S. I love that all of you girls are the same way!! We only get 10 days of vacation a year so we sure as heck won’t waste a day “resting” after a trip 🙂

• kate02121
• 5 years ago

• Wedding: August 2012

@MsVoyageur:  Haha that’s exactly how I look at it. Vacation days are precious and meant for vacation, even if I have to come back to work half asleep. 

• JessicaPop
• 5 years ago

• Wedding: August 2012

Ha! not as bad as me… I booked my honeymoon from the 6th-16th of august but school starts on the 13th! I will be missing 3 days from my first semester of junior year in college… yepp that’s me. 

• yellowshoe
• 5 years ago

• Wedding: November 2011

I used to always schedule our trips like that. Get off the plane late at night, back to work first thing in the morning. Until one time…our flight got delayed due to weather, then detoured due to weather and I ended up having to get off the plane, go home, change, and rush off to work. That was horrible. I now try to land at least in the afternoon or a whole day early. LOL. 

• GreenEyedMoon
• 5 years ago

• Wedding: January 2012

@yellowshoe:  Agreed.  My epic US-to-Japan-to-work experience I previously described worked, and I survived it despite the fact that I didn’t even get to go home between travelling and going to work (the new English teacher had difficulty fitting his luggage in the car because of mine… oops)… but I wouldn’t ever repeat it.  

We did give ourselves a day of recovery when we came back from our honeymoon (well, we were supposed to have a day… but then my second job scheduled a huge meeting at 9:00AM… after we got back at 11:30PM the previous night…  Fortunately, almost everyone at that meeting had been at my wedding a week previous and new I was just getting home, and I got major kudos for showing up at all!).

• RahlyRah
• 5 years ago

• Wedding: June 2012

@Angelz_love:  I actually just got back from a honeymoon in Greece and Turkey.  I had a really, really hard time adjusting to the time difference there.  I seriously couldn’t get over the jet lag for like 4 days.

On the upside, I had no problems adjusting when I got home.  The very first night I was so drained from travel and so happy to be home I had no trouble going to bed at normal time.  The next day I was a little sleepy, but nothing that a little coffee couldn’t fix!

• yellowshoe
• 5 years ago

• Wedding: November 2011

@GreenEyedMoon:  you win though with the park bench sleeping! after cutting it that close I just don’t want to risk it again. Especially had our flight continued to be delayed due to weather I would have missed work…which was my first day at a new client.