JUST SAYING

Exotic honeymoons are out right now. My parents made do with an afternoon tea – but they made up for it later, says Adrian Bridge

It is hard not to feel huge sympathy for the scores of people who, over the past year, have had to put on hold their plans to get married – and to mark the event with a holiday that should be the most romantic of their lives.

In last week’s issue we devoted eight pages to the sorts of breaks that – hopefully – will once again be possible before too long. Trips to the grandest cities of Europe; escapes to far-flung tropical islands offering intimations of paradise.

I got married in a bit of a hurry – please don’t read that the wrong way – and didn’t have a huge amount of time either to plan or go on a honeymoon. With a wedding day set just seven days before a full-scale move to Berlin, my wife and I spent our wedding night in Brighton and then managed three nights in Florence. It was January, but the sun shone; we smiled and drank prosecco from the balcony of our room, soaking up views of the river Arno and the distant Ponte Vecchio.

Modest though that was, it was a world tour compared with the honeymoon my parents had in December 1951. At the time they were both passionately involved in building up a business together – a travel company, as it happens. But there was no long trip for them. They didn’t have the money. So the honeymoon consisted of a drive out to the Hertfordshire countryside and afternoon tea in a hotel. And then it was back to London – and the office.

Of course, back then in post-war Britain, trips to the Maldives were not a honeymoon option and many newly-weds began married

There must be countless couples preparing to accept a low-key honeymoon

life with a stay in Britain – a trend that, as we reported, is finding a strange echo in these modern times.

There must be countless couples right now who, rather than delaying the Big Day yet further, are preparing to accept a more low-key ceremony and honeymoon destination and seeking to make the best of it they can – hoping that one day they will be able to revisit that holiday of their dreams.

My parents certainly did. Their travel business flourished. And within a decade they had begun a series of journeys that took them to Rome, the Riviera – and Rio.