Hotel room blocking

When I originally did it I blocked off one room for every family (unless they had a big family, then I did two)/couple..... so I had thirty rooms...

However, what we ended up doing was starting with 15 rooms and then if we book up quickly they will add more... Plus not all of your out of towners will book with the hotel you choose (apparently an indoor pool is a MUST for them). In the end, I say overestimate for about 5 rooms... your guests will have a certain amount of time too book the rooms and whatever you don't fill the hotel will take back for general use... so its always better to overestimate than underestimate. Hope this helps!

I tried doing this and it is high season where i am getting married so they wanted me to put a deposit down in my credit card and stuff. I didn't have hundreds of $$ for this purpose so i ended up not blocking anything. I put the hotels info on the website and they can call and get the reservation done themselves. So far some of them have booked their rooms already because they got the save the dates well in advance.

I booked what the hotel said was an average which is ten rooms. I did have to leave my credit card, but they said they would not charge it.

I blocked 10 rooms thats what the hotel suggested

Thanks! I'll probably have to book at least 10 rooms at two hotels that way they have options. maybe 15 to be safe. If they want a deposit though they can forget it. lol.

Am i horrible for not including hotel information with my invitations? i mean most of our out of town guests are originally from this area anyways. and i just don't want to assume how much someone wants to spend for their hotel room. i mean i guess i could include a couple but i won't be blocking rooms.

Ladylee - I was contemplating doing the same thing. It seems like another hassle and possible expense if you guesstimate wrong. Plus, I'm not getting married in a big city like New York where hotel reservations might be hard to come by... I'd rather suggest a few nice ones and let my guests handle those arrangements themselves.

Im with you all. You can suggest hotels, put them on your website but if they ask for $$ down, they can do them themselves. I wouldn't trust a hotel with my credit card and going thru the hassle if they charge it by mistake...

Becareful of hotels that ask for money. I found that all the ones I looked at (national chains) did not require that. Although, that may be a regional thing? We ended up going with Hampton Inn because they had an indoor pool.

The main reason I want to block a few is because most of the time they offer a discount if you block them off. If there's no discount I probably won't bother because then it just seems like a waste of time. Austin is a big city but my wedding is going to be so far south that I think reservations won't be a problem.

Should i block any hotel rooms even though we don't have many out of town guest

I say if there's no fee and it would discount the rooms, go for it. If not, I wouldn't worry about it.

I've only got to worry about booking a total of 5 or 6 rooms. b/c thats all the OOT families/couples we have...and i'm going with holiday inn, which has a heated indoor pool, and superbalicious beds plus, they're actually fairly inexpensive, depending...most we've paid was $100, but that was at an airport, and they can be more expensive in a locale like that i've learned...and i def wouldn't put up money!

We blocked off rooms at the Holiday Inn. We're actually having our reception there so guests will get a little bit of a discount (not much though) and we also blocked off rooms at a cheaper hotel (two parking lots away) with some of our friends in mind that might not have much money and don't care about the rooms except that there is a bed to sleep in. I'm not sure how many we blocked off since my mom so kindly took care of it for me. Since our reception is at the hotel we considered some in town guests in the block of rooms since there will be alcohol and some of our friends/family like to drink and would feel better about not having to travel anywhere.

Use a large hotel chain that will give you the best rate... It is recommended that you do 10 rooms for every 100 that you invited. You will speak with the hotel manager and they will generally draw up a contract for you to sign showing that you have x number of rooms blocked off at x dollars a night. You will then give that information to the guests traveling in and ask them to book no later than 3 weeks prior to the wedding. In the contract it will say that you are holding these rooms until 2 weeks prior to your wedding date... at two weeks prior the hotel will drop any unused rooms. At a large hotel chain you should not need to put your credit card on file to hold the rooms, your guests however will need one when they book the room. You may want to also verify with the hotel if they just simply authorize the guests cards or if they actually put a hold on the money. This will be good information to pass on to your guests. Best of Luck! ~Simple Elegance Texas

I would estimate how many people have an hour commute and then ask the hotel to block out that many rooms. Also if people have to travel for six hours you might want to look into blocking out rooms for two nights.

I did the average of 10 rooms with $89 discount at Holiday Inn....

I would strongly suggest giving guests one to three suggestions for hotels rather than just letting them fend for themselves. I say this because some guests will want to stay in a hotel where other guests are staying and if you don't give them at least a suggestion they won't know where to stay. We went to a wedding once where the couple didn't give any suggestions and we had to call around to find out where most people were staying. Nicer to just give them a short list.

We only blocked 5 rooms, because there is a group of 8 of us that are renting a vacation house instead. The hotel is near the vacation house so people can go to and from with ease. And when I say US I do mean the groom and myself will be staying there too the week of the wedding. We are currently residing in Louisiana but were getting married in Florida. The majority of our guest are local to there.

I agree with PP-- do NOT trust hotels that ask for money! This SHOULDN'T be something that costs you anything because you are giving them business! Think about it... if 20 rooms get booked through them thats 2000 they get in a weekend which might be slow otherwise....

What they SHOULD do is have a time frame in which your guests can book rooms.... if they haven't booked by that time you lose the rooms you blocked and your guests won't get the discount (for ours this is about a month before the wedding, so they have plenty of time)... this is a REASONABLE agreement. If you have a place that wants to charge you I might put up a recommendation on a website but I wouldn't block off the rooms