August or December 2023 – Where to go?

So I am in charge of planning my honeymoon and I am a bit lost. We were originally planning to go in August 2023 and do Maldives + a second destination like Rome or somewhere in Japan. The goal being to see two places, one being relaxing and one being more active, over the course of 14-16 days. I know doing two destinations may be tight in two weeks but we don’t take international vacations often and both agree we want to cross two places off the list.

The issue that I’m running into is that in August I’ve been told all of these places are bad to visit. Maldives will be in it’s rainy season and Rome/Japan would be unbearable hot/humid (I don’t deal well with the heat so anything like texas in August is off the table). That being said, we can also go over the Holidays in late December / Early January.

We aren’t set on really anything yet other than we would like to do an overwater bungalow for a few days. I was hoping to hear peoples opinions on two places that would make sense to string together and whether August or Late December/January would be a better time to go? We’re based in NYC and our budget is upwards of 20k cash and I’ve got about 750k chase / Amex points which I’ll use to subsidize whatever I can. Our preference would be for a week in a bungalow/beachy destination followed by a livelier city either in Europe or Asia.

I appreciate any and all suggestions.