Looking for travel advice

Hello,

I am looking to arrange a honeymoon trip to Europe at the end of
September (~27th). We will have about a month to travel, we will be
flying out of Vancouver, BC - and our basic plan is to fly into Rome
and travel throughout Italy, Spain and Portugal and then fly home from
Lisbon.

I don't have a lot of experience planning trips like this so I am
looking for advice on the best way to pull this off. I have visited
travel agents but right now they are basically telling me that its
still to early to be planning for that time.

One travel agent gave me a price for the two flights (Vancouver-Rome;
Lisbon-Vancouver) at around $1300/ticket (CDN$). I have also been
checking Expedia and Travelocity, and they seem to be offering higher
prices than this.

Others have recommended we fly round-trip to London to make it cheaper
and use London as the start and end-points of our trip. While it
would be nice to include London, I don't want to plan too much for one
trip. I feel like we would waste a significant amount of time getting
to Rome from London and then getting back to London at the end.

While I am looking for the cheapest option, I don't want to waste any
of our travel time just to save a few bucks.

If anyone has any advice or any ideas, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks for your help,
Mike.