We Finally Get to Honeymoon!

Image via Tourist Destinations

I'm interrupting my recaps for the next few weeks because we are finally leaving for our honeymoon to Australia and New Zealand this week (woot woot!!)  As some of you may recall, we decided to put off the honeymoon until this month for a number of reasons;

• Since we had a destination wedding, that itself was like a vacation so we didn't want to take two trips back to back
• It was winter down in Australia and New Zealand in May
• With all the wedding hoopla over, it gave us something major to look forward to (and most importantly, gave me something else to plan!)

We have a jam-packed itinerary put together for us by Down Under Endeavours that includes 8 cities, 10 flights and a number of once-in-a-lifetime activities/excursions (Scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef? Check.  Hugging a Koala? Check.)  We've even invested in a sweet Fuji underwater digital camera (paid for by one of the Amazon gift cards we got from our registry--HOLLA!!) so we can get some cool shots while doing water activities.

Amazon

We will be gone for nearly a month and will be traveling to regions varying from 100 degree weather (Daintree Rainforest in Australia) to 45 degree weather (Queenstown, New Zealand).  So the major thing on my mind is--how's a girl to pack for all seasons utilizing only one big suitcase?!?

To start, I basically threw a bunch of personal care, beauty and medicinal stuff together and divvied them up into separate carrying cases.  Then, I threw my clothes in a huge pile and started eliminating items that can't be worn multiple times or mix n' matched.  But the hardest part were the shoes--I somehow whittled it down to only 7 pairs (ooh the humanity!!)  I know that may sound insane to some of you, but each shoe was chosen carefully based on it's practicality and versatility.
 
It was a long, arduous process, but somehow I went from this hot mess;

To this;

Nice, neat and ready to go :)  Because we're traveling so far, Mr. M and I have decided to put half of each others' stuff in each suitcase--that way if one bag gets lost or delayed, we'll both at least have some things to hold us over.  We also bought a few packets of Tide so we can do laundry a few times while we are there (allowing us to pack less stuff).

But really, at the end of the day we just need our passports (plus ETA visas for Australia) and each other--anything else can always be purchased abroad!

So ciao for now--looking forward to sharing our honeymoon hi-jinx with you all when we get back!