Well, Round 1 of Voting for our One-Year Anniversary Trip is complete. To recap: We did a surprise destination trip in April 2019, where we let our friends on social media pick a destination for one of our weekend camping trips. We had no idea what our destination would be until after we had packed the car and left the house. We had a blast, and we’re pretty sure everyone who researched destinations and submitted them had fun too (the International Banana Museum in Mecca, California, was the randomly-selected location!).
So…we thought our friends and family should pick where we go on our “one-year” anniversary trip! Given that COVID-19 has messed up our entire wedding plan and we are not taking our honeymoon until the end of our “wedding year,” this trip will be the first anniversary trip after we’re finally able to do our honeymoon.
In Round 1, everyone voted for a continent for the One-Year Anniversary Trip. And the winning continent won by a landslide:
Australia/Oceania/South Pacific
Now it’s time for Round 2! In Round 2, you can vote for one of these four trip options (all of which are located on the Australia/Oceania/South Pacific continent):
- Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea
- Marshall Islands; Federated States of Micronesia, Palau
- New Zealand and Tonga
- Australia and Timor-Leste
Whichever one of these four trips gets the most votes will be the trip we do for our One-Year Anniversary Trip.
To cast your vote, you can either click here and submit your vote on the form, or you can email us.
But wait, there’s more
Similar to Round 1, if you provide a non-mainstream destination with your vote, your vote will count three times. Because we are allowing folks on social media to vote this round, your vote will automatically count twice. If you provide a non-mainstream destination, your vote will count three times.
“Non-mainstream” means a destination or experience that doesn’t show up in every general guidebook you find on that country/continent/region. For example, going to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, is a mainstream destination and counts as one vote. Finding a bar in St Croix, USVI, where pigs will open and guzzle a beer in front of you…well, that counts as two votes.
Mainstream destinations/experiences for the four trip options you can vote for would be: Sydney generally (and within Sydney: the Sydney Opera House or the Sydney Bridge), Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Tasmania, the Great Barrier Reef, Uluru, Auckland, Christchurch, any adventure sports in New Zealand, and anything movie-related in New Zealand.
Other than these destinations, any other suggestions within the countries listed above as voting options will be considered non-mainstream.
(Remember, your non-mainstream destination suggestion can be, but doesn’t have to be, within Australia/Oceania/South Pacific.)
Also, for this round, the voting also isn’t limited to a household – everyone within a household is able to submit their own vote, if they wish!
We got some fantastic answers for non-mainstream destinations in Round 1, and anyone who offered a non-mainstream destination with their vote got their vote counted twice. All of the destinations are now recorded on our various adventure maps and we will be incorporating them into a trip whenever we do visit that area of the world!
Remember, to cast your vote, you can either click here and submit your vote on the form, or you can email us.
We can’t wait to see what you all decide for us!