Our Honeymoon | Punta Cana, DR!

Hellooooo, friends! We are finally settled in after the best trip of our lives. This past week has been crazy getting back to work, navigating sharing a house together (so fun), cooking dinner, and learning how to live this new life we’re experiencing. I’m finally finding time to sit down and write this post – I have been SO excited to share this trip with y’all! This is quite a long post – so I apologize in advance! Note: everything I’m wearing that is in stock, I will share at the end of this post, so keep reading to the end! ♥

First and foremost, I’m giving allllll the credit for this amazing trip to our travel agent, Brandi Passmore. Look her up on Facebook! She handled everything from flights to payments, and we never worried about ANYTHING other than packing and showing up for our flights.

(Which was interesting…hopefully being a wife will bring me more organization skills? Let’s hope. Keep scrolling to find out what I’m referring to!)

We went to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic for our honeymoon. And before you say anything, YES I’ve heard the many new stories about crazy stuff happening – we got a million texts everyday asking if we’d seen the news. But we didn’t experience anything weird or bad during our stay. We were careful and the place we stayed had high security! Our resort…y’all. IT WAS AMAZING. We stayed at Excellence El Carmen and I seriously recommend it to everyone. (Like, I was telling the cashier at the grocery store about it and encouraging her to go. I can’t stop advertising.)

We arrived on Sunday and were picked up by a driver and taken to our resort (about a 40 minute drive) – this was interesting because our driver spoke zero English. Michael and I were kicking ourselves for not paying attention in 10th grade Spanish class because we could only think of like 2 phrases to say to him! We were pointing to our rings and he understood we were newly weds and kept saying “Fiesta!!” Lol.

When we got to the resort, we were freaking out because it was so fancy. The concierge offered us a damp towel to dab on our faces after our long flight (what?!) – we felt like royalty. We were shown to our room (with a private pool – again, thanks Brandi!) which had a “honeymoon” banner on the door, how sweet?! See pictures of our room below!

It had a cozy bed outside in the shade and another bed in the sun for laying out!

LET’S TALK FOOD:

The resort had 12 different restaurants, and we’re already planning a trip back because there wasn’t time to try them all! We loved that everything was all-inclusive, because we could try lots of things from each restaurant. We ate breakfast at The Kitchen Table every morning and I miss it so much. We also REALLY took advantage of the room service! I probably ordered nachos twice a day the entire trip – it’s fine. Everything was delicious! The biggest deal to me this trip was that this resort is very gluten friendly. Every restaurant asks YOU if you have a food allergy, before you even have time to tell them! I have never experienced that before. They marked my ticket so the cooks would know about my gluten allergy. Then, the menus very clearly indicated what was GF and what was not! It was incredible. I loved being able to enjoy my trip without worrying that I’d get sick.

Breakfast was our FAVORITE part of every day at Excellence.

Here are photos of some of the breakfast from The Kitchen Table:

One of our nights at the Sports Bar…it felt like home haha! Michael loved the cheese sticks and onion rings there. I got a burger with a GF bun!

Part of our “honeymoon package” included a romantic dinner (we chose the Mexican restaurant, duh!) and a breakfast in bed! We got to fill out a form with our favorite breakfast food and they brought it to our room on the morning we chose. It was amazing.

Our “breakfast in bed”:

Our romantic dinner night:

FUN STUFF:

They had a schedule of events for every day/night! We watched a pretty cool circus show one night! They also had live music each night and dancing. There were pool tables and ping pong tables near our room, so we played those a lot too!

We did one excursion – it was basically a party boat! So fun! They picked us and a few other couples up from the Resort and we had about a 40 minute bus ride to a little market area on the beach. We all loaded up on a water taxi that took us to a big party boat. We hung out on that boat all morning and danced, went snorkling, ate snacks, and danced some more! About the snorkeling…..the fish would come right up to your face while you were underwater! Some of them even jumped out of the water and almost hit me. It was crazy. I only enjoyed snorkling for a few minutes before I got back on the boat because I don’t do critters touching me. LOL!

Ignore my hair…it was crazy because of the boat!

The boat ride was SO fun, and we eventually made it back to the beach where we were served lunch. Again, with the gluten thing, being in the middle of the DR on a boat, I was really nervous about what I could eat! I almost thought about skipping lunch and waiting until I was back at the resort and could eat safely. But even there, in this little village, they asked me if I had a food allergy and they marked my ticket as allergic to gluten! They fixed me a special lunch that was completely GF! I couldn’t believe it. I am so appreciative to them for that.

MORE FUN:

Back at the resort, we spent all day every day lounging in beach chairs under an umbrella. If we were hungry, they’d bring us food to our chairs on the beach! It was luxury.

They also walked around with exotic animals and let you hold them for pictures! (Disclaimer: make sure you have cash for tips!) But this was by far the coolest thing ever!

We met the cutest monkey ever!

The Iguana was super weird to hold…I didn’t really want to do it but I did it for the experience! The MONKEY, however. Michael and I immediately googled how much a monkey costs because we were obsessed and we want one! Lol.

The other huge takeaway from staying at Excellence was the service. Everyone who works there seems to LOVE their job. They genuinely enjoy serving people. Multiple times while we were there, they called our room just to check in and see if we were enjoying ourselves. There wasn’t anything we needed that they weren’t happy to get for us. Even the people who brought our room service or cleaned our room were so cheerful and excited to be there. I kept telling Michael over and over that everyone was so kind. It’s easy to find resorts that are all-inclusive but to find a place where everyone takes pride in serving you and LOVES making sure you’re having fun – that’s rare!

This trip was so incredible, I cried when we were leaving! Mostly because I thought our flight was on Saturday and not Friday, so when we realized we were leaving THAT MORNING it was a bit of a scramble to the airport (LOL if our marriage survived that, we’re definitely gonna make it).

Traveling with my best friend was one of the best experiences of my life so far. We are already so excited to plan our next trip! Thankful I have him as a travel buddy forever.

But even during that craziness of me being an idiot/not paying attention, our concierge called us a cab and helped us get to the airport with no problem. I cannot say enough good things about our stay at Excellence and how helpful/amazing everyone is there!

If you have any questions about our trip, dos/don’ts, etc. feel free to send me an email or DM me on Instagram!

Outfits:

Leopard swimsuit – top and bottom (RESTOCKED!)

Denim shorts

Rainbow swimsuit

White sunnies

Michael’s pineapple swimsuit

Michael’s Hawaiian shirt – on sale!

Pink swimsuit

White tassel coverup

Palm leaf dress (I never had a chance to wear it, but I’ll def bring it on my next tropical trip!)

Big straw bag – similar, mine was from Walmart but is sold out!