Planning a honeymoon and want to make sure your spa treatments are green? Read what our resident green wedding expert has to say on the matter:
When searching for the perfect honeymoon destination, most couples envision a dreamy locale with natural splendor – a beach, a rainforest, waterfalls — or an exotic city with sensory delights. No matter where you choose for your getaway of a lifetime, you’re very likely to make spa treatments a Must for your dream honeymoon experience.
But before you get seduced by the promise of a couple’s massage on the beach, be sure that massage is conducted with all-natural, eco-friendly elements. Since your skin is a vital organ, it’s important to have only natural, organic products rubbed into it, wrapped around it, and smoothed against it. You’ll enjoy the indulgence more knowing the treatment is beneficial to your health, and you’ll maintain a glow of wellness and radiance all through your honeymoon when a healing spa treatment is indeed eco-friendly.
You’re quite lucky to be a wedding couple of today, since the vast majority of resort spas and hotels include green spa treatments in their menus. And many use locally-sourced natural ingredients that add the magic and history of their culture.
Here are just a few examples of the kinds of organic spa treatments you’ll find at some of the world’s top-rated, award-winning resort spas:
King Pacific Lodge, British Columbia
King Pacific Lodge, A Rosewood Resort, is an eco-friendly resort in the heart of the Canadian wilderness that offers guests the chance to experience outdoor adventure and to interact with an ancient culture that has stewarded the land for more than 10,000 years. You arrive by seaplane to discover a natural wonderland filled with forests, waterfalls, and wildlife including bald eagles, murrelets (an endangered species,) sitka deer, seals, whales, and in September, you may see the Kermode Bear, a white bear known to the local First Nations as a ‘spirit bear.’ Spa treatments in this nature-lover locale include:
- Wraps using British Columbia Pacific seaweed and Canadian glacial clay nourish the skin with vital nutrients. Fascinatingly, these organic wraps have been used for centuries by local First Nations people as a natural healing remedy.
- Fine salt crystals, natural oils, and fresh Pacific seaweed are utilized for a skin purifying and revitalizing treatment. Glacial Purifying Cleanser and Green Tea Pacific Seaweed Salt Glow are applied to gently exfoliate and cleanse skin, removing any impurities. After a warm rinse, Glacial Revitalizing Mist and Seaweed Body Butter are massaged into the skin to restore nutrients and leave the skin looking and feeling soft and smooth.
- Naturally smooth basalt rocks harvested off of the beaches and riverbeds around Princess Royal Island are used to deeply penetrate and relax the muscles and nervous system. Essential oils with the aroma of the forest stimulate the senses and enhance the treatment process.
King Pacific Lodge features a locally-sourced line of certified organic seaweed skincare, called Sea Flora, which is harvested by a local woman known as “The Seaweed Lady” from the beaches of British Columbia, a matter of a few miles from the Spa at King Pacific Lodge.
Set on a private island off the coast of Antigua, Jumby Bay is a favorite vacation destination for celebrities and British royalty. At SENSE®, A Rosewood Spa at Jumby Bay, you’ll find such indulgent green spa treatments as these:
- Jumby Bay Elixir For Two: This couple’s treatment brings the healing powers of the ocean to the entire body. Enjoy a glass of sea moss-infused tea while your feet are treated to an exfoliating foot scrub and therapeutic reflexology. An invigorating full-body scrub exfoliates and refreshes the skin. During a massage of your choice, the room fills with the fragrance of ylang ylang.
- Island Embrace: This treatment begins with an organic marine-based scrub to revive and exfoliate you from head to toe. Once your skin is ready to absorb the benefits of white algae, you are enveloped in a soothing body mask made from calcium-rich algae harvested by hand from the Patagonian coast. Strips of white algae are applied to the face, encouraging a healthy glow. The treatment is followed by a full-body massage.
- Sea Coral & Coconut Ritual The skin is given a stimulating cleansing using a natural jute fiber mitt filled with moisturizing aromatic soap beads which scrubs, refines and exfoliates. This invigorating experience prepares the skin to absorb the nutrients of a silky white clay body masque infused with the essences of local flowers, mineral-rich pink coral and healing coconut milk. The ritual is completed with a pressure-point scalp massage and your choice of a Swedish or deep tissue massage.
- Sense Spa Journey: Balance your body, mind and spirit, while allowing your skin’s toxins to be released with a sugar cane and botanical oil treatment, then finish with a signature hot shell pedicure. Enjoy a delicious spa lunch focused on heart healthy, culinary delights.
- Earth & Sea Scrub: The body is exfoliated and wrapped with pure salts mined from Himalayan peaks and cleansing mud allowing detoxification and healing. While wrapped, your therapist will focus on acupressure points to aid in this cleansing effect. An organic, rejuvenating essential oil is gently massaged into the skin.
- Sea Mud Envelopment: Nourishing and warming, this relaxing treatment begins with a full-body brushing, followed by an application of pure organic algae oil. You are then enveloped head-to-toe in a purifying, self-heating black algae body mud. The blend is rich in organic components ideal for moisturizing and treating hair and skin, while the warmth encourages absorption of the amino acids, minerals and vitamins.
- Jumby On The Rocks Massage This hot stone massage is a lovely, relaxing treatment that uses warm volcanic stones and warmed organic oils to stimulate circulation and release stress.
- West Indies Signature: Jumby Bay’s signature massage uses warmed island bamboo to help work out the knots and kinks in your body and restore you to a state of island-style well-being.
- Neem Healing Facial: Soothe and purify even the most delicate skin with the benefits of neem. Extracts of the neem tree, which grows on Jumby Bay Island, are combined with soothing oils and our signature massage, to heal, hydrate, restore and firm sensitive or irritated skin and balance its youthful glow.
This beach vacation resort, nestled within the U.S. Virgin Islands National Park on St. John, remains faithful to the vision of founder Laurance Rockefeller and his reverence for the environment. Seven secluded beaches border 170 lush Caribbean acres where wild donkeys and deer roam the grounds, happily at home, and spectacular snorkeling delivers you to a magical world beneath the sea. Eco-friendliness is in this resort’s DNA, from its design and furnishings to its spa treatments.
- Hot Stone Massage: The ancient healing art of hot stone massage uses Nature’s healing elements of heat, water and earth to bring the body into finer balance. By massaging with the deep penetrating heat of smooth volcanic stones, your therapist works in harmony using various massage techniques to deeply and effectively work your muscles and balance your energy.
- Raindrop Therapy: Benefit from the qualities of essential oils that fall like raindrops along the spine, followed by massage and reflexology.
- Aloe Wrap: This wrap moisturizes all skin types, and is ideal for those experiencing sunburn. Relax with a neck and feet massage while natural aloe penetrates your skin during the wrap. The session finishes with a mini-massage including the application of silky rehydrating lotion to your body. Your skin will be smooth and nourished; your mind and body relaxed.
- Bee-utiful Honey Facial: The resort’s own organic honeybee hives are the source for this warm, healing honey facial, which can be customized to a hand or foot treatment as well.
Tabacon Grand Thermal Spa Resort
Located at the bottom of the Arenal Volcano in La Fortuna, Costa Rica, this resort’s spa utilizes its location to provide hot spring treatments courtesy of its natural thermal river and twelve hot spring pools and lagoons. Volcanic stones are used in massages, and the eco-rich soil is used for mud wraps.
The Boulders Resort & Golden Door Spa
Arizona is known for its spa culture, and this honeymoon destination recently expanded its menu of 
organic spa services to include new products that are created from natural, organic ingredients. Some of the new organic services include Organic Scrubs with seasonal body soufflé “flavors” such as Pear & Green Apple (fall), Cranberry & Pomegranate (winter), Blueberry Soy (spring), and Cucumber Mint (summer).
Not only are spa treatments eco-friendly, but a growing number of resort spa centers are designed with earth-friendliness in mind. From bamboo floors, low-flow shower heads, energy-efficient lightbulbs, recycling plans, organic spa robes and slippers, organic massage table linens and even organic uniforms for the therapists, be sure to check out all potential honeymoon resorts’ and hotels’ green practices and commitment to the earth before you choose your perfect getaway spot. Then add an array of green spa treatments to your honeymoon registry, or let close friends and family know that gift cards to your chosen resort would be welcome gifts to help you relax, replenish, indulge and bliss out with several heavenly spa treatments.
Sharon Naylor is the author of over 35 wedding books, including The Complete Outdoor Wedding Planner, www.sharonnaylor.net
