We wrote about Vanessa and Henry a little while back. They were one of the first couples to sign up to use our site back in October 2013 when we’d just launched. We loved them instantly, as you do those first brave strangers who try out your new business. But when we saw their gift list, we were totally baffled.
Either their friends and family were all chipping in to buy them some seriously expensive envelopes or someone was organising their honeymoon for them without them, or anyone else, knowing where they were going or what they were doing.
And so we discovered Blind Experiences – a truly brilliant business built for the brave.
Here’s how it works:
So you’re getting married and want to do something a bit different for your honeymoon.You tell the team the dates of your trip, your budget and a few details about you as a couple – I love heights, he hates snakes, we are both mildly ambivalent about couscous – and then you just shush up and wait.Blind Experiences then talk to your best friends to fine tune their plans for you and when everything is organised they send you a leather bag containing 10 envelopes – each with an ‘open date’ on the outside and instructions to follow on the inside. And that is it.
You can go 20% blind meaning a particular part of you trip is a surprise, 50% blind so you know where you’re going roughly but not the details or, if you’re super brave, you can go 100% blind which means you know nothing until you open the first envelope.
Of course this is what Vanessa and Henry did.
“We had no idea where in the world we were going to be sent. We just answered a few questions and let them sort out the rest. This way, if we ended up somewhere completely ridiculous, the laugh would have been on us for rolling the dice. Thankfully, we ended up in Zanzibar and Namibia and had the most almighty trip.
The combination of Patchwork and Blind Experiences really provided some much talked about excitement in the build up to our wedding, everyone bought into it from and early stage and by the time our wedding day came, the fever was electric.
We opened our first envelope at our reception amongst all the people who had contributed, it was pretty nerve-wracking! Our friends were able to follow our blind honeymoon as it happened, and as we opened each envelope with new instructions and things to do they could share our excitement as the days rolled on.”
Of course you can use our site to fund your honeymoon, in any way you like, but we thought this particular idea was worth sharing.
Vanessa and Henry say:
“We would recommend both these companies in a shot to anyone, everyone loved being part of the whole experience and we only wish we could do it all again. We’ve already used Patchwork for a friend’s birthday and hope Blind Honeymoon will become our travel agents of the future. The best way to travel!”
To find out more about Blind Experiences go here and to find out more about Patchwork go here.
Here’s to the brave.