Airfare and Unrest

A few weeks ago my dad brought to my attention the fact that he felt nervous about going over to Greece for the wedding with all of the political unrest over there. (In his words: "You better come up with a backup plan, the country of Greece might not even exist next month!). After waiting it out a little and coming up with a (sort of) backup plan... things seem to be safe enough, and I feel confident that we'll be safe and Greece should still exist by January.

My first task to (re) start my planning was to check on airfare. The plan is to leave about three days before the wedding day and stay about a week afterward to tour. My parents will be paying for my and my fiance's tickets as well as their own and half of my brother's (and his girlfriend's) - altogether, it'll end up being 5 plane tickets that I must fit into my budget. I almost shat my little bridal bloomers when I saw that the $600/per ticket price tag I was expecting was far from reality. In 2008, when BG and I visited- we paid $1,200 total for the two of us (we spent $2,600 overall after two weeks including airfare, hotel, food, booze, tours etc.) As of this morning - tickets are running about $1,100 EACH. OUCH. That means I'll need to set aside over $5k for TRAVEL? That is (exactly) half my budget!

So... what to do? Well, after doing some research, emailing some experts (and by experts I mean travel bloggers that write survival guides for Athens and destination wedding planners online - as well as the sales department at Lufthansa) I have come to the conclusion that buying today would be a silly, financially irresponsible thing to do. Airlines don't post their seasonal sale prices until (maximum) 3 months out - sometimes not before a month out... but that's cutting it close for me. I'll wait until the end of August to search again. And hopefully get enough people together to take advantage of some sort of group rate.

I signed up for a bunch of airfare watcher emails (airfarewatchdog, bestfares, travelzoo, etc.) so that I can keep track of ticket prices without having to search every week. My fingers are crossed that not only will the Euro stay down (it's currently at 1.22) but also that plane ticket prices will PLUMMET.

-Etta