Honeymoon in France in September

Pretty good first stab.

One option I might suggest: instead of Nice, do a day or two in the Loire Valley. The chateaux there are easy to get to (train to get there, rent a car to get around), and you can hit the major chateaux in just a couple days. There's nothing like them, they're quite memorable.

Congrats and good luck!

Congratulations, Beth!

This is an awfully ambitious itinerary. Have the two of you been to Europe before? Do you know the ropes?

If not, I think you should consider Normandy and Provence to be mutually exclusive choices, unless you can add a few more days to your trip. A day in Provence is just not worth the very long trip from Normandy. And if you do it anyway, you really don't need a car.

Splitting your time between Paris and one of the other great destinations on the other hand could be very satisfying.

Itinerary looks pretty good. I would recommend you look for hotels ASAP, since September is coming up soon and a lot of hotels will be booked already.

If it were me, I would not do the south on this trip. Instead I would do more with Normandy and Brittany. We just got back from 4 nights in St. Malo and one in Auray with a guide for some of the neolithic sights in and near Carnac. And on a previous trip we spent 5 nights in Normandy.
https://janettravels.wordpress.com/category/normandy/
This is such a lovely area and you wouldn't have the huge trip to the south and back. I would also start in Normandy and finish in Paris where you would be to fly out. There is not IMHO enough time for Paris in this plan. Day one is lost to jet lag, use to get to a further point, even to the south if you keep that in. Then you don't waste a great vacation day at the end getting back to Paris. This is a lot of moving around and every move chews up time to enjoy being in a place with logistics of moving around.

You can from Paris do dozens of great day trips to small towns, villages, chateaux, small cities like Rouen and Reims etc etc. The Loire chateaux are an easy maybe two night trip from Paris.

Obviously you do the trip you want to do and people have different travel styles, but if you haven't done a lot of this sort of travel, reflect on how much driving and parking and checking in and out of hotels you want to do versus being able to walk out of the hotel to a cafe and then walk along a river, and visit an interesting site and sit and have a drink in a charming place etc etc. Lots of travel and changing towns chews up so much time with the least fun part of a trip. You go all the way to Avignon but do nothing with Avignon etc etc.

My reaction is similar to the last comment: I would not try to do the north and south on the same 2-week trip, especially since you say you don't want to spend all your time traveling from place to place. Choose either the north or the south, in addition to Paris. If you're already locked into your flight from Nice, then save Normandy for a future trip. Heading south from Paris you could spend 2-3 nights in the Loire Valley or spend that time further southeast in Lyon and Beaune.

When you rent your car, if you're heading south, get the car at Orly. If you choose Normandy instead, get the car at CDG. By getting the car at an airport you will avoid driving & navigating through the city streets of Paris, which can be stressful and slow.

The RS guide to France gives good advice on getting to and from the airports via car service (Paris Webservices was superb), bus, or rail transit.

If Normandy stays in the plan, I highly recommend a van tour of the D-Day sites rather than the do-it-yourself approach. A tour will be much more informative. I was very happy with my Overlord Tour, but there are other options. Dale Booth draws a lot of positive comments, too. Most of the van tours depart from Bayeux, which has the tapestry and a good WWII museum.

To give you an idea, France is almost as big as Texas. Keep that in mind when you look at a map.

A couple years ago, I spent 10 days in Burgundy and Alsace. I had a car for 4N in Burgundy, stayed in one town and day tripped around to villages, a chateau or two, an abbey, several churches, a cathedral, a couple of wineries and lovely scenery. Then I spent 3N in tiny Eguisheim in Alsace just outside Colmar and did much the same. The two areas are quite different in wines, foods, and architecture. Then I dropped the car in Strasbourg and spent 2 full days there. I never ran out of places to see and things to do. With 2 weeks, I'd recommend at least 5 days in Paris, though a week is not too long, especially if you're splitting your time there into 2 parts. Then the rest in the countryside, with 2 or maybe 3 bases in different areas. Choose areas that are driving distance from each other. Renting and returning a car takes time so only do it once. If you want to rent a car when you get off the train, keep in mind that you may have to wait in line. That's even truer if you want to drop the car and immediately hop on a train. Returning a car can take 5-10 minutes or an hour.

I would definitely want to spend my last night in Paris, so I'd be close to the airport, especially if you have a morning flight. Also, if you've already booked your R/T Paris tickets, you don't want to take a chance on a separately ticketed flight to CDG and have a schedule change or a delay and miss your flight home!! At least, if you are in Paris and there's a rail strike, you can take a taxi.