"Using your new honeymoon guidebook is simple. You'll find a list of activities to do in each of the three countries that are part of your honeymoon trip. Your only task is to mark whatever activities you have completed, then send the pages of this book back to us once your trip is over. We will go over the list of completed activities and, based on their associated price, calculate the aggregated cost and make you a transfer for that amount. We like to think that, in this way, and even if it's after the fact, we are funding your trip and some of the great experiences that you will have there.
The guidebook contains a section dedicated to each of the three countries in your honeymoon trip: Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. For each country we have personally selected a total of 18 activities to do. Right next to each activity's title you'll find a checkbox that you can use to mark the activity as completed.
The six main activities for each country have a special place within their section, each displayed along a custom illustration carefully designed by us. Closing each section, you'll find a series of empty activities to be filled out by you. We wanted to give you the opportunity to complete the guidebook with experiences that you have personally enjoyed but were not included in the original list. That way, we can learn about other cool things that you guys have done there and make a note of them for when we do that same trip ourselves in the future!
We didn't want this guidebook to steal some of the excitement that comes with planning your trip, so we decided to wait until the very last moment before sending it to you. We hope it contains many of the things that you had originally planned for, but also a few new options that you were not aware of and that you can now include in your plans. One of us lived in Thailand for a year, so we have included some insider recommendations that you might not have found in your Google searches (look out for the hashtag #localflavor).
Without any further ado, we'll let you enjoy your new and amazing Honeymoon Guidebook!"
The Honeymoon Guidebook (2019)
The reader is introduced to the guidebook in the terms above.
The Honeymoon Guidebook is a customized, interactive wedding gift. It is born from a resistance to more traditional and materialistic alternatives. We were looking for a way to create something personal and meaningful, a present that would bring the bride and the groom a beautiful experience that they would never forget, as opposed to a beautiful piece of jewelry to be abandoned in a drawer.
We decided to help fund and plan their honeymoon trip, researching a series of fun experiences that they could live there, on us. On top of that, the guidebook itself is a product that, because it is conceived, designed, and illustrated by us, stands on its own as a beautiful present with sentimental value.
Much of this sentimental value comes from the total of 18 illustrations that were made to go with the main activities for each country. Some feature custom Bitmojis that we defined for the bride and groom to include in the illustrations. If you've been to Southeast Asia, you'll probably be able to recognize many of these places and activities.
The design for each activity includes its title, description, price in the local currency, and a hashtag to help categorize them (including a #localflavor tag that identifies personal recommendations from our experience living in those countries). The most popular, illustrated activities are followed by a wider range of less popular and non-illustrated ones, and finally by a few empty spots for the bride and groom to complete with their own ideas. The guidebook combines Spanish and English, in what is a reflection of the culture mix present in both its authors and the recipients of the gift.
In a landscape format, the guidebook features double-paged background pictures from each country, and three different color schemes to match them, present in the boxes as well as in the borders around the illustrations.
Headed by the description quoted above, and closed by a short note from the authors, The Honeymoon Guidebook is a very simple, gracefully designed, lightweight travel guide, easy to carry around and fun to play with. An original idea to turn a wedding gift into a present with both sentimental and monetary value. A collection of exciting activities to enjoy that's, at the same time, a personal item to keep as a memento.
- Josema Cruz & Danielle Alojado
