From resplendent safari camps tipping over wild rivers to sandstone design dens stitched into the Utah desert, here are our the honeymoon hotels our editors would tap their Mr & Mrs Smith wedding gift card against.
Experts in the anatomy of a stylish boutique hotel, Mr & Mrs Smith lay claim to a treasure trove of honeymoon stays for discerning couples. Not only do they have a knack for articulating exactly what makes hotels in their curation so beguiling, with trusted reviewers, they are tirelessly unearthing gems across the world, from rustic guesthouses to haute hotels with interiors choreographed by eminent designers.
In an exciting development for the newly betrothed aesthetes, Mr & Mrs Smith have launched a wedding gift card – essentially a portal into their exquisite world of louche and lovely hotels. Family, friends and wedding guests can simply top up the gift card to unlock that once-in-a-lifetime island adventure to Fiji, or perhaps that frosty fantasy to trace the Northern Lights from an Arctic TreeHouse suite – the options are deftly tailored, not endless.
Never ones to miss a honeymoon hack, the Wedding Edition’s editors have perused Mr & Mrs Smith’s enticing collection of boutique hotels, wedding gift cards in hand. From resplendent safari camps tipping over wild rivers to sandstone design dens stitched into the Utah desert, here are the honeymoon hotels our editors would tap their Mr & Mrs Smith wedding gift card against.
Alexandra Dudley: Esperanza, Los Cabos, Mexico
Wallow in bath-warm water on the very tip of the Baja Peninsula, where newly weds can quite literally fall off the edge of the continent. Esperanza in Los Cabos is a sumptuously reimagined vision of the golden age of travel, where linen curtains drape over beds, palms frame veranda views across the Sea of Cortez and scalloped hammocks engulf entire afternoons. When not snoozing in the shade or inspecting the cigar menu, days are spent whipping through 17 tropical acres on horseback, gawping at humpback whales or competing with fresh spouses over a heated game of doubles at dusk. A lavishly laid-back Californian sensibility permeates the design and the menus – a symptom of Los Cabos’s popularity with the LA set.
Clinging to a cliff with waves pounding the rocks beneath it, Cocina del Mar works its culinary magic on Mexico’s coastal plunder (and is a wildly romantic spot for sunsets). Lazy lunches typically recline in the Pesca Ceviche Bar, The Lounge Bar and La Terraza Americana for salads and sandwiches, while honeymooners can run the full foodie gamut for dinner, adding buttoned-down Italian haunt, Las Estrellas and La Palapa for its bona fide Mexican menu.
A series of suites, villas and casitas swallow up honeymooners for hours on end, all peering wistfully out to sea, all inhaling the warm salty air. Esperanza’s knockout main pool, flanked by deep-cushioned sun loungers, tips over the Sea of Cortez from his dizzyingly high vantage point. Every Thursday, its patio plays host to Fiesta! an authentic Mexican party of regional food, live music and fireworks. Margaritas feature throughout: in the earthy lounges dressed in Mexican art, alongside sunloungers lost in a tangle of exotic palms and cacti, and even on the spa menu, where lime-scented creams are skillfully worked into hand and feet – in a palapa on the beach, if you’re feeling al fresco.
Book it with your Mr & Mrs Smith Wedding Gift Card here
Rosalyn Wikeley: Flat Mountain Farm, Highlands United States
Ensconced in Highland rainforests of North Carolina, Flat Mountain Farm has the same shoulder-lowering effect as an 6pm gin and tonic or a slow amble through a morning meadow. Its cabins may be dressed in Ralph Lauren-inspired fabrics, with the same sensibility and symmetry of the brand’s all-American pastoral-but-prosperous aesthetic, but this is fishing country, where handsome design touches tow the rustic line and adhere to the agenda: fishing, hiking and hiding away from the world. Guests quickly slip into nature’s rhythms, shuffling a little closer to the elements as they switch off their phones and chat meaningfully around a firepit. Newlyweds can fling their rods in a canoe and paddle out on the farm’s own lake for trout fishing adventures, or map out a route through the Rainforests of the Southern Appalachians, with a private outdoor hot-tub greeting them with a gurgle on their return.
While the Flat Mountain Farm has no restaurant, they can help guests hire a chef to whip up tasty, seasonal plates for their cabins. And if the thrill of seclusion starts to wane after a few days, Highland’s labyrinth of restaurants and cafés are an easy drive away. The farm can also arrange for local therapists to flop honeymooners like happy seals onto their tables for deep tissue or Swedish massages in the cabins.
Along with its antler light fittings, the lantern-studded porches and the caramel oak panelled walls and ceilings, the retreat to simplicity is what makes Flat Mountain Farm so enticing and endlessly romantic. There is a sense that you are suspended in time, with only the shifting leaves of the surrounding forest and the odd frog croak interrupting nightcaps on the porch.
Book it with your Mr & Mrs Smith Wedding Gift Card here
Francesca Newman-Young: Marataba, Marakele National Park, South Africa
Marataba’s dramatic views of the Waterberg mountains and wildlife-brimming river below make its open-plan canvas choreography all the more beguiling. This is where honeymooners are woken by African sunrises burning the tips of the Waterbergs and exotic birds chattering in the Baobab and Bush Willow, from an exceptionally luxurious room pasted into the wilds of South Africa’s Marakele National Park.
Suites range from elaborate tents channelling a subdued riff on the Victorian explorer aesthetic to impressive wooden structures sculpted around the trees, open air decks for beds theatrically suspended above the bush and its wildlife below. Back on ground level, a smooth, curving pool poses as a natural oasis, with contemporary white sun loungers and large canvas hammocks tied between the handsome trunks of bush trees. The main hotel’s gently cubic structure cleverly weaves its contemporary spirit into the surrounding bush and invites guests inside for a fireside game of cards on a cow-hide pouffe, then outside with firepits and lanterns suspended from branches etched into the evening sky.
In true Savannah style, sun-downers are a big deal – where debriefs on the day’s safari drives roll out over gin and tonics and crimson, African sunsets are as fleeting as they are phenomenal. Honeymooners will relish the wildlife spotting opportunities – the endless malaria-free and majestic plains, dense bush and hilly terrain of Marakele National Park are rife with various species of animals including sable and mountain reedbuck, and the Big Five are not as elusive as one would expect here.
Safari lunches and dinners under a vast star-studded African sky bear the silver-service trappings of yore, with sumptuously seasonal menus showcasing African flavours and cocktails made from exotic fruits plucked from the surrounding trees.
Book it with your Mr & Mrs Smith Wedding Gift Card here
Yasmin Salmon: Zannier Hotels Bai San Ho, Vietnam
Reality quickly washes away at the beachfront Zannier Hotels Bai San Ho, where 240-acres of dense, undulating jungle rushes past paddy fields and tips into turquoise waters. This far from the madding crowd resort swallows up honeymooners for weeks on end, with its glorious private beach, other-worldly diving expeditions and sensational, seasonal restaurants. Locality takes centre stage, and is honoured across the board – menus, materials, activities, spa treatments – in true Zannier style.
Occupying a leafy chunk of the unspoilt, go-slow province of Phu Yen, Bai San Ho’s main structure rises out of the jungle in gentle contemporary proportions, its stone camouflaged into the surrounding palms and dense greenery. View preferences dictate the choice of suites – sugar-white beaches, hills scribbled in greens, a pristine pool or picture-perfect rice paddy fields – as well as the architecture, all of which echoes the region’s mosaic of culture and customs. From the pitch-roofed Beach Pool Villas to the cosy stilted Rice Paddy Villas recalling fishermen’s houses, rooms are fiercely private and reference Vietnamese design tradition in refined, rustic strokes. Wickers, linens, blades of wheat and scuffed wooden floors set an earthy, organic tone, and burn a deep amber as the lanterns usher in the night. The flawless furniture arrangement spills onto verandas alongside inviting plunge pools and amid a cacophony of birdsong (one of the many rewards of Phu Yen’s untouched wilderness).
Top-drawer restaurants give snorkelers, paddle boarders and fishing trips a reason to head back to shore. Vietnamese street-food is given a refined treatment under Bà Hai’s soaring ceilings and a cavalcade of seafood plates show off the coast’s bounty at beachside Làng Chài. Honeymooners can spend afternoons cocooned in the Hoa Sen spa, whose treatments are inspired by traditional healing rituals and therapies, or simply wile away the hours by the pool, whose far-reaching views and sunsets across the bay are romance personified.
Book it with your Mr & Mrs Smith Wedding Gift Card here
Alessandra Frame: Amangiri, Utah, USA
This Southern Utah desert showstopper is the honeymoon of aesthete reverie, a contemporary design den cleverly sculpted into the wind-whipped rocky landscape. Couples can either stow away in the minimalist suites or step a little closer to nature in one of Camp Sarika’s canvas-roofed pavilions (set apart from the main hotel while still benefiting from all its luxurious cosmopolitan fruits).
A smooth pool traces a hefty bulge of sandstone, imitating a glassy desert oasis for well-dressed guests to flock to. At dusk, the pool switches on its romantic charm, with uplighting animating the surrounding rock and smooth, contemporary lines that feel curiously at ease with the jagged backdrop. Stark, near-brutalist rooms are softened with wicker chairs, woven rugs and pools of brilliant desert light. The mood is distinctly minimalist – an avant garde architect’s cave dressed in the restrained hallmark shades and materials of modern luxury. Cubic glass windows slice through the sandstone to bring the desert inside – an ethereal view for honeymooners from their cosseting, King Size beds (with The Mesa View Suite or the Sunset Vanyon Pavilion at Camp Sarika tried-and-tested sunset favourites).
A jacuzzi and fire pit stave off the chill during winter, when the desert is sparse, inhospitable and even more ravishing. Year-round, it is best explored with ferrata excursion guided tours for superlative hiking and rock-climbing, or with Amangiri’s biking team, where the area’s ecology and human history are paired with adrenaline-pumping trails.
More laid-back agendas are best taken to the Aman Spa, whose menu riffs on Navajo culture and its healing traditions. Time hits differently here as the steam room, sauna, plunge pool and water pavilion work their magic on tense shoulders and tangled up thoughts (when therapists aren’t doing a stellar job of it with sage-infused goodies). There are heaps of euphoria and a dash of smug to be found in mastering yoga balances with eyes fixed on cinematic Utah rock formations or savouring a Prickly Pear Margarita poolside after a drawn out dinner of bison burger with a generous desert breeze.
Book it with your Mr & Mrs Smith Wedding Gift Card here
More honeymoon hotspots…
The Wedding Edition’s editors couldn’t resist adding some additional properties on their honeymoon radar, particularly these good-looking three which are new to the Mr & Mrs Smith fold and ripe for Wedding Gift Card redemptions.
Masilina Resort, Croatia – for its smooth, contemporary conversation with the surrounding cliffside scrub, which slopes in mottled greens and browns to meet the Indigo Aegean Sea.
Skinopi Lodge, Milos – for its photo-ready pools, lovely lo-fi interiors and sun-soaked Dalmatian coast views.
Terrestre Oaxaca – for its brutalist, angular spin on Aztec aesthetic, in the untamed, cacti-riddled plains of Oaxaca that are cooled off by a salty, coastal breeze.
Fore more information on setting up Mr & Mrs Smith’s Wedding Gift Card, or where to spend it, visit: mrandmrssmith.com/gift-cards
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