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My older sister is the best person I know. My mum is abundantly generous and aggressively eccentric, my dad is gentle and thoughtful and quietly magnetic, and Maisie is the perfect blend of the two of them. When she’s not working as a carer, she spends her time cooking delicious meals for her friends or running uncompetitive marathons with her equally socially conscious and generally good-person boyfriend. She’s always the last person on the dance floor and the first person up in the morning cooking breakfast, and has absolutely no ego – she lives in an entirely thrifted wardrobe and hasn’t had an Instagram account since she was a teenager. In my experience, Maisie is incapable of passing a homeless person without giving them cash, and recently gave fifty British pounds to a stranger because “they needed to take their puppy to the vets”. All that’s to say, I love and admire her more than anyone in the world, so when I was invited to experience Australia’s first “un-honeymoon” package (a hotel stay for the person you love, but aren’t actually married to), Maisie was top of my list. And luckily for me, she was visiting from the UK over Valentine’s Day weekend.
In response to Australia’s falling marriage rate (currently at a 20-year low, down from 7.1 per 1,000 people in 2004 to just 5.5 in 2023), the sustainability-focused hotel brand Crystalbrook has launched a package to allow couples all of the indulgence of a honeymoon, “no rings attached”.
We arrived at Crystalbrook Byron mid-afternoon, and the first item on the agenda was to sign the Unhoneymooners ‘Vow to Indulge’, a pink-toned certificate that saw us pledge our commitment to having a delightful AF time.
A magical wooden boardwalk led us through the rainforest to our room, where a bottle of Louis Roederer Champagne and a charcuterie board loaded with local cheese and grapes were waiting for us, along with a set of specially crafted ‘Connection Cards’ designed to spark conversation during our stay. The cards are very much geared towards romantic couples (questions include “What do you find most irresistible about me” and "Describe our most flirtatious memory”), but as we flicked through them over dinner in the hotel’s open-air restaurant, we found ourselves discussing topics that we might not have otherwise touched on. We talked about holidays as children and the traits we love about each other, topics that Maisie often avoids for fear of straying into too-sincere territory. She’s blessed with the strain of very British humility that renders oversharing self-indulgent, and it was a treat for me to tease out of her things that I love to discuss.
As is sometimes the way in Byron, it rained pretty much non-stop during our stay, but I think that only added to the magic. I’m embarrassed to admit that – aside from a long walk on Tallow Beach, which is just a few steps from the property – I didn’t leave the resort for the whole three-day trip. We spent our time between our big room in the trees, the 25-metre infinity pool, the yoga shala (daily yoga is complimentary for all guests) and the restaurant, where we dined lavishly on beautifully presented local produce (the Byron Bay stracciatella with baby beets and a sweet, plummy vincotto was a fave – so good we ordered it at every meal besides breakfast). The pace of the stay was how you’d expect a honeymoon to be, and the energy of the hotel made it the perfect place to step into holiday mode. Occupying a stunning 45-acre pocket of subtropical rainforest, Crystalbrook is formed of a network of free-standing buildings hiding between the trees, meaning you can’t leave your room without being reminded of what a beautiful corner of the country you’ve found yourself in. Having grown up in the countryside, Maisie and I can both feel a little jarred by sky-high city hotels, and the connection to nature was one of the things we loved most about our stay – nature sets a tone that makes everyone feel like their best, most at-peace self.
As part of the package, we had desserts (a trio of layered cakes: chocolate, matcha and red velvet) delivered to our room, along with specialty cocktails with honeymoon-coded names like “Spice It Up” and “Love Potion”. The package also includes a couples spa treatment, and we spent a heavenly 90 minutes drifting in and out of sleep in the couples treatment room as two gifted therapists worked on our aching muscles (we’d spent the previous week cycling around the Mid North Coast, more on that here).
If we’d had the time, we could have added an addition to our package (these differ per resort, ranging from wine tastings to reef heli tours), but as it was, we spent a perfectly peaceful few days between the trees – playing chess on the stone chess board by the pool and clinking Champagne on our private enclosed verandah, with Crystalbrook’s curated un-honeymoon playlists playing through the speaker.
To quote relationship expert Susie Kim, who worked with the Crystalbrook team to design the package: “Love doesn’t need to be followed by a wedding, but connection is still worth celebrating.”
Kim explained how important travel is for couples, and I think her insights can be applied to familial and platonic love too. “Whether it’s a trip to celebrate a special milestone or create a fresh start, travel helps couples step out of routine, reconnect and rediscover each other. The Un-Honeymoon is about creating that space — a luxurious invitation to celebrate love in all its forms.”
I’m generally pretty guilty of skimming over paperwork at hotel check-ins (too excited to jump into the pool to confirm the details of the Wi-Fi code), but if and when you book your own ‘un-honeymoon’, I’d recommend taking a moment to properly read what you’re putting your signature to. Every guest who checks in to Crystalbrook’s “no rings attached” package is agreeing to the following: “To sleep in shamelessly, to toast to yourselves. To indulge recklessly and regret nothing. To choose pleasure over pressure. To celebrate the little luxuries. To relax like it’s your only responsibility.”
The package itself is only available to book until March (on offer at all seven Crystalbrook properties, including one right here in Sydney), so if you miss out, I’d suggest taking and running with the “no rings attached” manifesto on your next sibling getaway.
You can learn more and book over here.
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