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plane, Montreal, 1946]]A honeymoon is a vacation taken by newlyweds after their wedding to celebrate their marriage. Today, honeymoons are often celebrated in destinations considered exotic or romantic. In a similar context, it may also refer to the phase in a couple's relationship—whether they are in matrimony or not—that exists before getting used to everyday life together.
Honeymoons in the modern sense—a pure holiday voyage undertaken by the couple—became widespread during the Belle Époque, in the late 1800s as one of the first instances of modern mass tourism.
According to some sources, the honeymoon is a relic of marriage by capture, based on the practice of the husband going into hiding with his wife to avoid reprisals from her relatives, with the intention that the woman would be pregnant by the end of the month. See, e.g., William Shepard Walsh, Curiosities of Popular Customs and of Rites, Ceremonies, Observances, and Miscellaneous Antiquities, (J.B. Lippincott Co., 1897), p. 654; John Lubbock, The Origin of Civilisation and the Primitive Condition of Man: Mental and Social Condition of Savages, (Appleton, 1882), p. 122. Curtis Pesmen & Setiawan Djody, Your First Year of Marriage (Simon and Schuster, 1995) p. 37. Compare with Edward Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage (Allerton Book Co., 1922), p. 277 (refuting the link between honeymoon and marriage by capture).
According to a different version, of the Oxford English Dictionary:
Today, honeymoon has a positive meaning, but originally it may have referred to the inevitable waning of love, like a moon phase. In 1552, Richard Huloet wrote:
In many modern languages, the word for a honeymoon is a calque (e.g., ) or near-calque. Persian has a similar word, , which translates to 'month of honey' or 'moon of honey'.
A 19th-century theory claimed that the word alludes to "the custom of the higher order of the Teutones to drink Mead, or Metheglin, a beverage made with honey, for thirty days after every wedding", but the theory has been challenged.
The first recorded use of the word honeymoon to refer to the vacation after the wedding appeared in 1791, in a translation of German folk stories. The first recorded native-English use of the word appeared in 1804.
According to the 2023 Global Wedding Report done by The Knot, among the 15 countries surveyed, an average of 75% of couples took a honeymoon. Honeymoons are most popular in European countries. Conversely, fewer than half of couples in India take a honeymoon. Beach resorts are the preferred location for many couples.
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