Once you've mortgaged rest of your life for dress and ceremony, made all sorts of promises in front of everyone you know and danced with your long-lost fifth cousin twice removed, you deserve a little time off to recuperate. It's called a honeymoon.

Your honeymoon is that wonderful period of grace between fantasy of your wedding and reality of simply being an old married couple. It's a time for two of you to get to know each other as well as two people who are going to spend next couple of days alone with only each other for company can. But not so alone that you can't ring for room service when you need it.

According to a recent survey by Modern Bride magazine, newlyweds are certainly not loathe to shell out when it comes to spending up on their honeymoon - on average, newlyweds spend $3,700 on their honeymoon. For average wage earner, that's almost 10% of their annual income.

Honeymoon spending is high for a number of reasons. Firstly, for most of us it's a once-in-a-lifetime chance to live it up, favoring luxurious resorts and exotic cruises over a two-star just-off-the-highway motel. And honeymoon is generally not time for going to stay with mad old Aunty Gladys who you haven't seen since you were five.

No, honeymooners want their day in sun, a time to luxuriate in newness of coupledom and they are usually looking for something special. So if that means ordering that second bottle of champagne, or deciding on lobster for dinner, most honeymooners don't give it a second thought.