WE LIVE IN USA
Check your passports before planning a honeymoon: green card holders and Taiwanese passports have different visa-free lists
Book the honeymoon 6–8 months before the wedding, earlier in peak season. But before choosing a destination, one thing has to be confirmed.
Your two passports may differ
A green card holder and a Taiwanese passport have different visa-free countries.
This is the planning premise most easily overlooked in a cross-border marriage. You look up "this country is visa-free for Americans," but if your spouse holds a Taiwanese passport, or holds a green card without citizenship, their situation may be completely different:
- A green card itself isn't a travel document; they still travel abroad on their original passport.
- Some countries have special transit or entry arrangements for green card holders; some don't
- If a visa is required, it may take weeks
So step one is: each of you checks your own passport's visa-free list, and you take the intersection.
With a green card in process, you may not be able to leave at all
❗ If one of you has a pending I-485, leaving the country without Advance Parole means the case is treated as abandoned (see item 121 of the checklist).
And AP takes months to issue. In that situation:
- Either apply for AP early and confirm it's in hand before booking
- Or honeymoon inside the US
Don't book non-refundable flights and hope the AP arrives in time.
The name on the ticket
If either of you is changing your name, this is the most honeymoon-destroying item on the whole checklist: the name on the ticket has to match the passport in your hand on the day you fly.
A new passport takes 6–12 weeks after a name change, and honeymoon tickets are usually booked long before. So:
- Always book tickets in the name currently on the passport
- The safer arrangement is to take the honeymoon on the old passport and change your name afterwardsA name change has no deadline, but a plane ticket does.
See item 55 of the checklist for the full explanation.
Other things to check
- Vaccination requirementsSome destinations require specific vaccines, and some vaccines need time between doses.
- Travel insuranceEspecially for itineraries with a deposit paid.
- Recognition of same-sex marriageSome countries don't recognize it, and a few even present legal risks (see item 74 of the checklist).
Don't fly out the day after
Leave 1–2 days of buffer.
On the wedding day you'll be going from dawn until late, and the next day there's teardown, counting and banking the gift money (see items 114 and 128 of the checklist), and possibly relatives who travelled far to host.
Fly the next morning and you'll sleep the whole flight and be useless on your first day there. One or two days' buffer changes the quality of the trip entirely.
If relatives from Taiwan are still around
Relatives who flew in usually stay a few extra days. Leave immediately on honeymoon and there's nobody to host them.
A common arrangement is staying three to five days with family after the wedding and then leaving. Or simply pushing the honeymoon back a few monthsThis also helps avoid peak-season prices and keeps your name-change timeline from getting stuck.
In one line
Take the intersection of both passports' visa-free lists, confirm no immigration case blocks you, book tickets in your current names, and don't fly out the next day.