Crowdfunding sites now fund honeymoons

Nicole DePinto and her husband Anthony rai-sed $2,900 on crowdfunding site GoFundMe for an Icelandic honeymoon. Other sites are Honeyfund and Honey-moon Wishes. — AP

Before they say “I do,” soon-to-be newlyweds are increasingly going online to ask, “Will you pay for our honeymoon ”

Crowdfunding websites such as Honeyfund, GoFundMe and Honeymoon Wishes make it easy to raise cash from family and friends for a post-wedding getaway. The sites charge fees for their services — as much as 10 per cent of the total collected — but people are warming up to the idea, despite the cost.

As couples increasingly live together first and marry later, they already have toasters and towels, so traditional gift registries don’t make as much sense. Honeymoon registries also provide a polite way of hinting to guests to give money instead, without breaking wedding etiquette.

“I didn’t feel right saying, ‘Hey, give me cash,’” says Nicole DePinto, who raised $2,900 on GoFundMe for an Icelandic honeymoon with her husband Anthony in December.

Sites that help couples raise cash for honeymoons have seen their popularity soar recently. Honeyfund users, for example, raised $90 million last year, a 50 per cent jump from the year before, says co-founder and CEO Sara Margulis.

Last year, 22 per cent of people using the Knot, a wedding planning site, said they also used honeymoon registries, according to a survey of 6,500 customers. That’s the same as the year before, but up from 17 per cent in 2013 and 13 per cent in 2012.

The DePintos even crowdsourced the destination of their honeymoon, asking the 100 guests at their travel-themed October wedding reception to vote on Greece, Iceland or Japan.