Hotels and places to stay for guests

You could setup a courtesy room block! That costs absolutely nothing to you. It works like this: the hotel sets aside a block of rooms (usually 10), sometimes at a discounted rate, and sets a deadline. You give the hotel info and room block name to your guests, and they can call and book a room in the block and pay for it on their cards. Any rooms not booked by the deadline are released back to the hotel so they could sell them to someone else. At no point would the hotel ever charge you or even get your card info. If all 10 rooms are booked before the deadline, the hotel will set aside another 10 rooms (depending on availability), until the deadline.

Also, I would include the hotel block info on your website and/or on a details card with your invitations.

As Lisa explained, I got courtesy room blocks/discount codes at Holiday Inn and Residence Inn at no cost. Guests just have to book at least 30 days before the wedding, otherwise they get release back to the hotel. I'm putting the hotel info on the details card of our invitation along with the discount code and date they have to book by. It's also on my wedding site (which was on my save the dates) so guests can book early from there if they'd like. I haven't sent invitations out yet and we already have 12 rooms in our block booked.

So we got married at a hotel and they automatically blocked off a certain number of rooms for our wedding. We didn't have to pay anything towards it. The rooms were discounted until a month before our wedding. Guests just had to give our name when they booked their room in order to receive the discount. I would recommend reaching out to a few hotels to see if they would require you to pay. I don't think all hotels will make you pay to have a room block. I do think it is better to have room blocks. I would include the information on a details card with your invites and on your wedding website.

Hotels offer courtesy blocks that don't cost you anything. If you are in a high tourist area/season, these can be helpful and the info would be included on a details card in the invite or on the website. Otherwise guests can find their own hotels.

As the other PPs mentioned, find a hotel that will do a courtesy block! Won't cost you a cent and you're not liable for unbooked rooms. We put our hotel block info on our wedding website, and we also had a details card insert that was part of our invitation suite which included this information as well

Definitely do some research - as others have said - some don't charge! I also started my room block at only 10 and can add on as I start to hear from people if they'll be booking a room and/or the hotel will call me when they're getting close to booking all 10 rooms to see if any additional should be added on. I just placed my room block last week and guests have until the end of June to book or the rooms will be released to the general public.

I have room blocks at 3 different hotels and didn’t have to pay to reserve. They hold the rooms till about 4 weeks before your date and then they release to the general public..

Totally agree with everyone- you don’t pay for a room block. It’s a courtesy. You put the info on a card that’s sent with your invitation.

We did a room block at the fairfield which is a marriott chain and they only do courtesy blocks aka free, you just have to be booked 30 days in advance

Many hotels do blocks as courtesy. For my hotel the block expires 15 days before my wedding. So after that, the rooms are open to the public to book.
Like 80% of my guests are traveling +3 more hours by car and plane.
I blocked out one hotel and suggested two others.

Oh and I'm putting the info on my website and including in the envelope with the invites

We did a courtesy room block, the hotel allowed 10 rooms to be blocked at a discounted price for free. 30 days before the wedding if the rooms weren't blocked then they went back on the market.

Def do a block, especially since you have guests flying from all over.

You can do a courtesy block which cost you nothing. I would pick at least 2 hotels, that way your guests have options. Your guests should not have to worry about finding their own hotel. Once you get your courtesy block, you can put that information on your wedding website.

We are NOT doing any kind of blocking for hotel rooms, simply because our out of town guests have family in the area and will probably opt to stay with them or get an AirBnB close by. So what we did was just recommend some hotels near the venue and near where we live. I don't even think anyone will look at them, but just in case! But yes, courtesy blocks are usually free!

While courtesy blocks are great, some areas don’t seem to have them. If you can’t do a courtesy block, I suggest picking 3 nearby hotels and offering them as a suggestion to your guest— one in each price point (high end, mid level, cheap) just to give your guests who aren’t familiar with the area an idea of where would be good to stay. If you have a website, this would be a great place to put this info, otherwise you could do it as a details card with the invitation (or with a save the date).

We ended up doing 2 hotel blocks at hotels close to the venue, but also recommended hotels close to our house, my parents house, or my sisters house and also offered to recommend hotels close to other nearby attractions if they wanted to change it up. We listed all the information on our wedding website.

Not all hotel blocks require a percentage down or minimum booked rooms !

I'm suggesting a hotel that's going to be command central for the weekend. Our shuttle departs and drops off there, after party is there, welcome dinner is going to be there.... if people want to book outside of it, that's their choice but I'm only putting in the leg work for that hotel.

ETA: For our guests who aren't ok with the hotel rate, factoring in Ubers to-from the hotel or to and from the ceremony if not wanting to use our shuttle, will end up being more expensive than just staying there. I am making that clear on the wedding site, just in case someone sees XYZ Hotel is $50 cheaper for the night. I don't mind people venturing out from where we are styaing, I just don't want anyone to end up paying more trying to pay less.

I didn't do a hotel block. I had recommended hotels with their numbers within the area of the wedding venue. That way they can choose which hotel they prefer to stay for their visit. I chose hotels with a variety of price ranges so they can choose what is best for them.