1. Choose your vacation luggage carefully. While togetherness is great, it's advisable for each of you to pack at least one bag of your own for clothes and toiletries.
2. Tip: Select vacation bags with wheels. Even garment bags come on rollers these days, so there's no need for anyone to wrench his back before the big night. And you won't feel so guilty including everything you'd like to pack.
3. Pack right for the weather. You wouldn't carry the same things on a safari vacation as you would on a trip to the tropics or Europe.
4. Going someplace where you'll need to dress for dinner? Place sports jackets, pressed shirts, and dresses in a shared garment bag. If possible, keep them separated by dry cleaners' plastic or tissue paper to avoid wrinkling.
4. Roll, rather than fold, vacation garments. It saves packing space and also can cut down on wrinkles.
5. Make sure your name, home, and vacation address are on a luggage tag and somewhere inside the bag you pack as well.
6. Pack your carry-on bag carefully: Pieces do get lost. Travel with one complete change of clothes, vital medicines, and sundries you can't live without in your carry-on.
7. Know what size carry-on your airline permits, and how many pieces are permitted on board.
8. Hate to shlep heavy shoes, books, and/or sporting equipment? Make life easy for yourselves: Send it ahead via Fedex, and arrange with your hotel to hold it until your arrival.
9. If you're on a budget, pack things like sunscreen, sunglasses, and skin lotion rather than planning to buy them at a vacation resort, where they're often expensive.
10. Make a photocopy of all your credit cards that shows numbers clearly. Pack a copy for yourself and leave the original with a trustworthy friend.
12. Pack a surprise. There's nothing like finding a beautifully wrapped gift on a pillow your first night together as Mr. and Mrs.
That vacation you're planning is more than a romantic getaway. Travel can be the start of a tradition that creates -- and preserves -- memories for a lifetime.
Some couples decide ahead of time on a ritual they intend to enact on every vacation. It could be as simple as asking a stranger to take a picture of them kissing. Or packing a little gift to leave on the other's pillow the first night. Or even scheduling their trip so they can attend the same event each year, such as a state fair or a music festival.
Of course, you don't have to determine exactly what you're going to do beforehand. Part of the fun is discovering the possibilities when you arrive at your destination and making up your mind what your tradition will be on the spot. (It is a vacation, after all.)
Things like always having breakfast in bed on the first morning of your vacation, taking a swim in a hotel pool every night before dinner, or capping each evening with a favorite bar drink are a few simple rituals that make good use of facilities away from home.
Then there are couples who make a point when they travel to visit a certain place in every new city they visit. It could be a church, a farmer's market, the local art museum.
I know one couple who seek out the local humane animal shelter on every vacation, and they always leave a donation.
The important thing is, do whatever it is you love, as consistently as you can.
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