Advice on scoring deals for wedding night suites?

Mention its for your wedding night and see what happens... Some do, some don't offer free upgrades.

Some hotels include wedding packages, but they usually cost more, for not a lot of added perks.

Try Trivago.com to get a good deal.

We held our wedding at a hotel, so our stay in the honeymoon suite was free on our wedding night. I've also heard that some hotels may include perks for the couple the night of the wedding if you've blocked rooms there for your guests.

Check out Bed & Breakfasts..

We were going to get a suite downtown in this hotel.. the two nights would have been 450. Friday before and the night off. They happened to sell out of the suite and it left us wandering where we would stay. We found this amazing manor and rented it for the weekend. We have all the bedrooms and the entire property for our wedding party. It provides plenty of space to get ready in, beautiful landscape for photos and the owners are AWESOME. She is setting the room up while we are at the wedding to return to, doing a whole breakfast buffet the morning of and everything.

The cost of our one room was only 360 and MUCH bigger than the hotel ever was. Each room has a living space in front and ours has an even bigger one used as the bridal suite.

My hotel told me if I get a certain amount of room booked in our block they will comp ours. I am 4 rooms shy!

So unfortunately there aren't any major hotels in Malibu. I lived in Malibu /Santa Monica for 6 years, and can tell you that short of some sketchy surfer motels you aren't going to find much. Check out Santa Monica or Calabasas. You're looking at about 20 minutes (one up PCH and the other through Malibu canyon) from central Malibu. Also be prepared to spend an outrageous amount for anything walking distance to the ocean that's more than 3 stars.

I found this to be very specific to the hotel and what they offer in their wedding packages. For instance, our wedding is at the Fairmont in Sonoma and it is a very nice hotel with their honeymoon suite costing $1000 per night - they are gifting it to us for the wedding night because that is part of their package. Other nearby hotels didn't even offer a room.