Editorial Team
Our content team
8 min read
Three days after the wedding, we were standing at Frankfurt Airport. Jonas with one backpack, me with one backpack. That was it. For two weeks in Bali.
Our friends thought we'd lost it. "A honeymoon carry-on only? No suitcase? And what are you wearing to the nice dinner, Lena?" Fair question. Honestly, I asked myself that same thing for about a week while packing.
But we pulled it off. Beach, rice-terrace hike, a candlelit dinner for our one-month wedding anniversary. All of it out of two small cabin backpacks. Here's how it went. And what I'd do differently next time.
Why go honeymoon carry-on only? The honest answer
Sure, saving money was part of it. Checked bags cost extra, especially on long-haul routes with connections.
But the real reason was something else. I didn't want to lose my wedding-dinner dress. It's that simple.
According to the SITA Baggage Report 2026, an average of 10.5 out of every 1,000 checked bags in Europe get lost, damaged, or delayed. That's the highest rate in the world. I honestly don't know if that number would matter this much to everyone, but it convinced me. And our flight went through Frankfurt, right through the middle of Europe. The idea of my dress vanishing somewhere between two terminals while we were already lying on the beach? No thanks.
Then there's the freedom of it. No waiting at the carousel. No dragging. We walked off the plane in Denpasar, straight to the exit, and were in a taxi twenty minutes later. That part felt pretty great.
He packs, she packs: two completely different approaches
Jonas and I pack in totally different ways, and honestly, that's exactly what makes a honeymoon carry-on only trip interesting. That became obvious fast during prep.
One detail most people miss: carry-on rules aren't the same everywhere. While Lufthansa allows 8 kg in economy, the limit at Emirates, Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines, and Thai Airways sits at just 7 kg. We flew through a Gulf hub, so we had to pack to the stricter 7-kilo limit. With two backpacks, every kilo counts, and if you're still hunting for the right carry-on backpack, our comparison covers the best models for flying.
Jonas' backpack: practical to the point of boring
Jonas is an engineer, and you can tell when he packs. He has a list. He weighs things. He'll debate whether a second pair of shoes is really necessary. (It wasn't.)
His backpack:
Four T-shirts, two pairs of shorts, one pair of long trousers that also worked for dinner
One shirt. Exactly one. For the fancy evening, nothing else
Swim shorts, flip-flops, a pair of light sneakers
Toiletries, all under 100 ml, plus charging cable and power bank
A thin rain jacket he wore on the plane so it didn't count against his weight
That was it. 6.4 kilos. He was done before I'd even started.
My backpack: the dinner-dress problem
For me it was trickier. Not because I wanted more stuff, but because of one single thing: I wanted to look genuinely good on one evening. Out of a backpack. Next to grains of sand and hiking clothes.
The answer was a jersey wrap dress. Dark green, wrinkle-resistant, and it did double duty: loose over my swimsuit during the day, then with a bit of jewellery and different shoes as a dinner outfit at night. One piece, two completely different looks, not unlike how I solved the same problem in packing a suit wrinkle-free in carry-on (Coming Soon) for a business trip.
The packing trick? I didn't roll everything. Everyday clothes, sure, those get rolled to save space. But the good dress and a nice skirt went folded into a thin garment sleeve, right at the top of the backpack. That kept them crease-free. My foldable evening flats lay flat against the back panel.
Plus:
Three tops, one skirt, the wrap dress, a pair of shorts
One bikini, one swimsuit, a light microfibre beach towel
Hiking shoes I wore on my feet, on the plane. No way was I risking those in checked luggage
Cosmetics. And here it got tight. Every serum, every drop of perfume, all of it had to fit in one clear bag. I left three favourites at home. Hurt a bit. But it worked
My backpack: 6.9 kilos. Just under the limit. At the weigh-in at home I genuinely held my breath for a second.
The test: beach, jungle, dinner
The real question, of course: does honeymoon carry-on only actually work in real life, not on paper?
At the beach: no issue at all. Nobody needs two weeks of swimwear. You wear the same thing every day anyway, rinse it out at night, and it's dry by morning. Bali is warm. Cotton dries fast.
The hike through the rice terraces was the moment Jonas' sensible shoe choice paid off. Me in proper hiking shoes, him in his light sneakers, both of us happy. No blister drama.
And the dinner? That was the moment of truth. We came back from the beach, I showered, pulled the green dress out of the garment sleeve, and I swear, it was basically crease-free. A little jewellery, the foldable flats, done. Jonas in his shirt. We sat on a terrace above the sea, and nobody, and I mean nobody, would have guessed that our entire wardrobe fit into two backpacks smaller than the suitcase at the next table.
That feeling was priceless. So little with us, and yet everything.
What I'd do differently next time
It wasn't flawless, if I'm being honest. A few things I'd change.
I packed one top too many. Wore it exactly zero times. Classic.
What I missed: a tiny travel steamer. The dress was fine, but my nice skirt had picked up a few creases after two weeks, and the hotel hairdryer only half-helped. Next time a mini steamer comes along. It weighs almost nothing.
And compression packing cubes. We had regular cubes, which were good. But according to our compression packing cubes comparison (Coming Soon), the compression kind would have freed up space for a souvenir. As it was, we had to hide the incense set inside socks and gloves.
Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. If you're putting together your own honeymoon packing list, or you just want to try what travelling without a suitcase feels like, start with a capsule wardrobe. Minimalist honeymoon packing doesn't mean giving up on style, it means picking a few pieces that go together and do more than one job. The rest sorts itself out.
We weren't the first to try this, by the way. The carry-on-only community in Germany is bigger than you'd think, take our backpacking at 40 through Southern Europe story (Coming Soon), for instance. But the honeymoon version? That one we had to figure out ourselves. And I'm glad we did.
