Hi all -

I hope this is the correct place to post, if not I apologize!

I am looking for some help from some seasoned travelers. I'm getting married in about a year (6/2012) so I have about a year to try and rack up some points/miles to help with the honeymoon.

We're looking to go on safari in africa (probably fly to JBL or Cape Town) so we're trying to figure out either how to minimize the flight cost or at least get an upgrade (it's a pretty long ride for coach... especially after a wedding). Our local airport is RDU but getting to IAD or ATL or JFK/EWR isn't a problem for us.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what we should be doing now to make our plans work out? Right now we have the SPG credit card (~50k points right now) since we weren't sure what we wanted to do.

I'd super appreciate any help - the rewards programs are a bit overwhelming when you're new at this

British Airways would get you to Cape Town from your location, so you and your fiance should apply separately for the credit card with the 100,000 miles. It'll give you both a good start at 200,000 miles.

Go to the post with the below title.
BA 100,000 miles promo is back

If you think that you and your fiance can spend a total of $6,000 in 6 months on credit cards, and you both have credit scores over 700, then you should go to this thread, read the entire 2nd post, and both signup for TWO American Airlines AAdvantage cards from CITI Bank.
One Visa and one Amex each. You will have to sign up for both cards at the same time, no more than 1 day apart to get approved.

Each card has the first year's annual fee waived ($85) and you will get 75,000 American Airlines AAdvantage miles deposited in your AAdvantage account from each card after spending $1,500 on it within the first 6 months.

300,000 AAdvantage miles is more than enough for 2 business/first class roundtrip tickets to South Africa. ENJOY!

Link:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...-up-bonus.html

read this thread for 5 or more pages for ideas....

both of you get the 100k ba visa card, and do the spend...then 1 complete the 30k spend by dec for the companion ticket 241...pool your ba mi's in a household acct & you should have enough for first awards....

good luck...

Thank you so much for the help already

We don't travel enough to get any traction with regular programs and when I do work travel, it's to non-major cities in europe that don't have chain hotels so the credit card tips are good.

We appreciate the help!

keep something in mind. There is guarantee that you'll be approved for 2 AA cards EACH. I applied and only got the Visa. No AMEX .... still waiting on approval from BA 100K miles. My credit score is over 730.

You should also remember that you don't really have a year plus to gather these miles. To make sure you get the flights you want, you should book as close to 330 days out as possible. That gives you until July to get the miles.

Did you apply for them both at the same time like it says, or did you wait between the two for more than a day?
My score at the time was a little over 760 and I applied for them both and got instant approvals. Most people did, from what I read.
If you apply for them both on separate days though, you'll most likely get declined.

If you cannot get two aa cards for some reason I'd also look at transferring your spg to aa to fill in the gap. If you have 50k spg that will get you 60k aa. Course if you had 60k spg that would turn into 75k aa because you could utilize the full 25% transfer bonus. If you pm me your name and email I can refer you to an spg business card that will help you get more bonus spg to do that (10k on first purchase and 15k after $15k spend - though having just gotten married myself I know how spending $15k before wedding can be hard unless you are bookig places). just another idea.

You could always use the spg points for where Everett you stay as well.

Yeah definitely! I booked my honeymoon around 320 days out. Not long after they opened the timeframe.

OP lost me at "pretty please".

OP, watch for atrocious fuel surcharges ("YQ") when using BA miles, or when using AA miles on BA. From IAD, in economy (commonly refered to here as "Y"), the taxes and YQ is $899.26. When compared to a paid fare, it is hardly a savings. In business ("C"), it is higher and if you wish to stop in LHR there are extra taxes.

If you go with One World, you might have to fly IB to avoid YQ.

Try to find a Star Alliance program as you can redeem without ludicrous YQ as well. See my signature for special credit card offers. CO is currently having a special of 50K. CO will soon merge with UA and your miles will be combined. After getting CO go for the 50K UA and you will have 100K.

BA is usually pretty open, but you have the fees to deal with. Might be worthwhile to look into the 100k card for each of you and then create a household account.

To the original poster:

My wife and I got married in Cape Town in June, 2008, rented a car, and spent a month meandering our way through Namibia and Botswana to Victoria Falls. Easily the best trip either of us has ever taken. If you want any advice, drop me a PM.

Cheers.

Screw the BA card. You're probably going to end up paying more with it in surcharges than a paid ticket will cost (just wait for one of those $700 IB deals to JNB - ok, I know it's coach, but probably still cheaper than a BA award and you can earn miles).

Your best bet is to get 2 citi AA cards. One personal and one biz have better chance of being approved than two personal so I would try that if the offers are still around. No fuel surcharge and you can fly as many airlines as you like. No stops though but AA will let you redeem for open-jaw tickets (e.g., fly into JNB but fly out of CPT).

Hope that helps.