Booking out the guest house??

I would think when figuring out your guest list, depending on how many the guest house holds, include accommodations in the out of towners invitations. You know as if you were booking a block of rooms at a hotel. That’s what I would think.

This is a little tricky. Can the guests book rooms and pay the venue directly or are you going to have to pay the entire amount and then try to get guests to pay you for the rooms? If it's the latter, then booking the guest house seems like part of the cost of your venue, and if that's the case, there's a very delicate line to walk with guests. They shouldn't be paying for your venue. Hopefully, the venue will let the guests book and pay for their rooms, just like with any hotel room block, but you would be responsible for the cost of any unbooked rooms. If the venue requires you to personally pay for all the rooms, I think it might be very awkward asking guests to "pay" you for their rooms. If you have too, I guess you can let them know there are however many rooms available on site at the venue for $X amount and to contact you if they are interested. Keep in mind, if people don't want to book or back out before you've collected $ from them, there is the potential that you are going to get stuck with the cost responsibility. (I'd strongly consider how many people are likely to need rooms and the cost of rooms at the venue vs. other available options when deciding if I were comfortable with this arrangement. We went to a wedding at an Inn in upstate NY. The B&G had a room block for pretty much all the rooms, and guests booked directly with the Inn [but the B's dad did help management the actual room assignments with the hotel]. The rooms were nearly $300 a night for a King [in the middle of nowhere...]. I thought that was CRAZY expensive, but there weren't really any nearby options that were easily accessible, so I had no choice but to pay it. However, if there were a cheaper option that would have worked, I would NOT have stayed onsite.) Good luck!

View Quoted Comment I agree with this. This is a tricky situation and if you have to pay for any unused rooms then you may have to be prepared to accept this as your total venue cost if guests decide to book rooms somewhere else. You can let your guests know about these rooms like any other hotel block but you can't force them to stay if they find another place they prefer.

Our venue is an old Victorian house because we are a Sunday wedding we decided to take advantage of the option to rent it out for the night (it's done like a vacation rental). It's small but per person, it's cheaper than a hotel, we'll be offering it our wedding party as a less expensive alternative at $X/night.