I Brought My Family On My Honeymoon Before It Was A Trend — And Honestly, I Kind Of Regret It

There’s a selfie of me from my honeymoon that pretty much sums it all up. I’m standing in a tiny Roman bar, my just-married 2018-era eyebrows looking manicured AF, and behind me, my husband, his siblings, and my brother are all lightheartedly bickering about something, completely unaware they’re in the background of a forever memory.

At the time, it felt sweet. Quirky. As if we were doing something different, sentimental, and brave. While most couples were off having sex in overwater bungalows or posing for ~just married~ pics on beaches, we were wandering Italy at Christmastime with our siblings. It was chaotic, charming, and — if you’d asked me then — exactly what I needed.

It turns out I was a few Aperol spritzes ahead of the trend.

Because now, group honeymoons are everywhere. Whether it’s a “familymoon” with your parents (looking at you, WSJ), a post-wedding bestie trip, or a full-blown friend group vacation with matching airport outfits (hi, The Cut), the traditional honeymoon-for-two is officially being reimagined. Articles are calling it intimate! Evolved! Community-building! And while I understand the appeal (again, I’ve been there), I also have a bit of a warning.

Now that I’m flirting with a decade of marriage (complete with two kids, one million family get-togethers, and approximately zero alone time with my husband), we need to talk about what you might gain and, more importantly IMO, what you might be giving up when you invite other people on your honeymoon.

Back Then, It Felt Like the Right Move

Image Credit: HBO Max

Admittedly, I thought it was a genius idea at the time, just like a lot of folks are about to think it’s a genius idea after seeing it trending basically everywhere. My therapist suggested the idea after watching me spiral over the thought of not being home for Christmas, and honestly, it solved a lot of emotional problems. My then-new spouse and I spent the first half of the trip alone, just the two of us soaking up newlywed bliss, and then we had our siblings fly out for the second half so I could pretend I wasn’t low-key mourning the end of my childhood.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be married — I did. And not just for the party and the ring and the dress, but because, yes, I found my person, etc. But there’s something about getting married that makes you feel like you’re closing a chapter, especially if you’re the first one in your family to do it. The fact that we were the first on both sides (despite neither of us being the oldest)? Hello, complicated emotions and guilt. My husband and I were starting our own unit, and that meant the holidays would look different. The traditions would shift. The group chats would slowly morph from “What time does your flight land?” to “What time can you FaceTime on December 24?”

I didn’t want to say goodbye to the version of life where my brother and I still woke up at our parents’ house on Christmas morning. I didn’t want to imagine him alone with our parents while I was off drinking wine in Rome with my new husband, who now represented my new family. So instead of choosing, I tried to have it both ways. And I did. Sort of.

Image Credit: Courtesy of Rachel Varina

“There’s a selfie of me from my honeymoon that pretty much sums it all up.”

We spent the first leg of our trip traipsing through Rome, throwing coins in the Trevi Fountain, making out in shadowy piazzas, and ordering wine with lunch like we were starring in our own Nancy Meyers-adjacent travel montage. We stayed (and had married sex!) in a glass tree house overlooking wine country, took steamy selfies in front of naked statues, and loudly overused the words “husband” and “wife” every chance we got. We’d traveled together before, but this was different. It was magical. Sexy. Weird in all the right ways.

Then, a few days after Christmas, our siblings arrived. We rented a big Airbnb in Trastevere and filled it with fresh bread, cheap wine, and authentic limoncello. My brother brought cookies from my mom. My new sister-in-law hung up Christmas cards from their grandparents like we were setting the scene for a Hallmark movie. We laughed, wandered, and bonded. And honestly? It was beautiful. We created core memories that we still talk about to this day.

But now, with distance — and maybe a little more life under my belt — it doesn’t take a psychology degree to see the truth behind it all: I wasn’t just afraid of missing Christmas. I was afraid of letting go.

Now, I See It a Little Differently

Looking back, I don’t totally regret it. It was fun. It was special. It genuinely meant a lot to me at the time, and I know it meant a lot to our families too. But now that I have two kids and a calendar full of family obligations, I’ve started to realize just how sacred that alone time was. We spent a big chunk of our wedding gift money flying our siblings out and hosting them. We didn’t explore new cities or squeeze in more romance — we literally circled back to Rome and replayed the same itinerary, just with more people, more opinions, and way less sleep.

At the time, I thought I was making a generous, emotionally mature choice. And maybe I was. But maybe I was also someone who didn’t quite know how to talk about what I was feeling. Sure, I needed to accept that things were changing and wanted to find a way to honor that change. Fair. But instead of pulling my brother aside and saying, “This feels hard and weird; how do we navigate it together?” I just… booked him a flight to Rome.

I thought merging my old life with my new one would make the transition smoother — less scary. But maybe part of the point of a honeymoon is letting it be a little scary. Maybe you’re supposed to sit in that unfamiliar space with just your person and let yourself feel it all — the joy, the grief, the shift. Maybe that’s where the magic is.

And looking back, I’m not sure I fully gave myself the space to do that.

It took becoming a parent to realize how rare that kind of uninterrupted time is. Not “let’s coordinate daycare pickup” time. Not “should we talk or just stare at our phones until one of us passes out?” time. Not even “weekend getaway where we call the kids and feel kind of guilty” time. I had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be selfish, to be slow, to be fully present with the person I just vowed forever to… and I filled part of it with shared Google Docs and group selfies.

Was it worth it? In a lot of ways, yes. But would I do it again? I honestly don’t know.

So, Should You Invite Your Family on Your Honeymoon?

Image Credit: HBO Max

These days, more and more couples are ditching the traditional honeymoon-for-two in favor of something bigger — siblings, best friends, even parents tagging along to celebrate the start of married life. And honestly? If that feels right for you, go for it. If your mom’s your ride-or-die and you want to get matching facials in the Maldives, amazing. If your idea of romance is a group pasta-making class in Tuscany with your bridal party, I support that.

But before you send out a shared Google Calendar invite, it’s worth pausing to ask yourself why.

Are you genuinely excited to share this moment with the people you love? Or are you trying to hold onto something that’s already shifting? Are you building a beautiful new memory, or are you avoiding the weird, quiet reality of what it means to fully step into a new chapter?

Because that quiet is part of the magic. That in-between space where it’s just you, your person, and the hum of something new settling into place. You don’t have to be afraid of it. You don’t have to fill it with other people. You can just… be there, together.

That’s not to say it’s wrong to use your honeymoon as a bridge between your old life and your new. It felt like a weight off my shoulders at the time, and perhaps present-day me is being too cynical. But I also know I used it as a way to escape some of those hard transitional feelings, and now boundaries have been blurred in a way I can’t take back. It’s harder to tell our parents we want to spend Christmas Eve with just our core family, or that we’d rather keep Easter for ourselves, because we laid the groundwork that the more the merrier — even during the most intimate of times.

And look — I also know how privileged it is to even have the option of planning multiple big trips in a lifetime. For many people, the honeymoon is the big trip. The one time they’ll get to go abroad, take two full weeks off work, or justify splurging on real luggage. If sharing that experience with your people makes it even more meaningful? I love that for you. Truly.

But if you do get the chance — just once — to take a selfish, slow, no-group-texts honeymoon with your person, don’t sleep on it. Because once life speeds up and your house is full of chaos and snacks and opinions from in-laws and children yelling for Miss Rachel? You’ll miss that silence more than you think.