Origin Of Honeymoon Holidays

[Chez_Guevara]

I know the meaning of the word honeymoon and something of its history.

Honeymoon was first used in print in 1552, in Richard Huloet’s Abecedarium Anglico Latinum. Huleot writes (translated into Modern English):

Honeymoon, a term proverbially applied to the newly-married, who will not fall out (quarrel) at first, but they love the other at the beginning exceedingly, the likelihood of their exceeding love appearing to assuage [any quarrels]; the common people call this time the honeymoon.

Credit to Wikipedia and checked elsewhere. The origin of the word varies according to the source.

So, for all the common people, my questions are these:

When did the custom of newly-wed couples taking a holiday during their honeymoon period begin?

I assume the common people began to take honeymoon holidays much later than their class superiors. When would the custom have become widespread amongst the common people, bearing in mind the obvious cost?

[samclem]

There is an OED cite as early as 1801 for a couple actually taking a honeymoon trip. I haven’t found anything yet about the common man.

[Walloon]

From the book Women, Marriage, and Politics, 1860-1914, by Patricia Jalland:

Lawrence Stone has sketched the development of the honeymoon from the sixteenth century:

“First it was no more than a description of the first weeks of marriage, which consisted of a non-stop, sex-segregrated public party with the wedding guests, taking place in the home. Next, it became a time of travel, but in the company of others, either a group or the sister of the bride. Finally, in the late eighteenth and very early nineteenth centuries, it became a time of withdrawal and isolation away from home for private marital exploration.”

Stone overstates the speed and timimg of this move to the third stage of the private honeymoon among the upper classes. The Victorian evidence suggests that stages two and three continued to coexist. It was still customary to spend some time on honeymoons with family and friends. . . . This sort of honeymoon did have the distinct advantage of providing continuity and saving some couples from a sudden, artificial isolation which might have put a strain on an immature relationship.