So my fiance and I have been trying to book our honeymoon for the past week, trying to take advantage before the American devaluation. We have from November 13th-December 1st for availability and have been trying to find a balance that gives us business class flights on the long hauls, maximizing our miles and getting us to a location that is relaxing and has a beach.

We decided to shoot for bora bora or the maldives and wanted to combine either with a trip to Australia.

Coming out of MIA I figured we'd be able to get something coming out of there to a major gateway (LAX or JFK) but I cannot get a single routing tha tmakes sense.

We have 330K AA miles between us along with 215 UR points for United. Booking 8 months out I was fairly confident we would be able to at least get premium cabins and make some sort of routing work...boy was I wrong.

Right now these are our two options:
JFK to Maldives
JFK>DOH>CMB>MLE on Qatar November 14th business class. This is fantastic, exactly what we need. However the problem is getting to Sydney then getting home.

Option two
LAX to Bora Bora
LAX>PPT Economy
PPT>AKL>SYD Business - my issues here is that we're paying for a business class redemption and I'm reading that the products aren't worth it. We're both small people so is the 30K premium really worth it?

The issue with both of these options is there is virtually no premium cabin space on the way back, i've checked on united and AA and have been trying every possible routing combination I can think of (between november 26th-Dec 1st) and I just can't find any using either.

Now I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels and that the thought of being able to redeem for a dream honeymoon was a bit too ambitious. I dont understand how anyone else is able to book these awards, I've been trying for the past 5 days.

I have the bora bora option on hold at the old redemption value, think my best bet is to just buy that hopefully accrue more aa miles and bite the bullet on an aanytime saver award on American. which I'll need an additional 155K between now and november to get. I'm not sure that's possible sicne it took us almost 2 years to get what we have now. united doesn't seem to offer anything viable either.