Welcome Bag Fee

Hotels charge because you are asking for a member of staff to leave their regular duties to make deliveries to individual rooms. Because this service is so in-demand, hotels have to monetize workers' time. Therefore, a charge is common and may even be a deterrance for some couples. An alternative is requesting a list of guests rooms and hand-delivering the bags yourself or via friends. I would not approach the hotel requesting favors with the attitude that your guests are their only source of profit.

I honestly don't think there is a way to avoid this unless you are doing it yourself, but then you'd need to know which rooms your guests are staying in and somehow gain access to each room which I'm not sure how you'd do that. We skipped welcome bags all together because we felt they were an unneccessary addeded expense.

I've been to weddings where instead of bags in the rooms, there was a table with all the welcome bags near the elevators or front desk with a sign that said "For the guests of the (name) wedding" and we just grabbed one on our way to our room. I'm not sure of the cost though!

$3 a bag isn't too bad. One of the hotels we were considering for our block charged $10 per bag (just to hand them out at check in!) After finding that out, we only considered hotel blocks that didn't charge a fee for handing out welcome bags. Unfortunately I don't think there's a way to avoid this unless you somehow hand-deliver.

You don't have to do welcome bags. Every hotel I've talked to doesn't charge a fee because they hand them out at the desk at check in. I think a fee is ridiculous. You could have all of the bags in your hotel room and have guests come to your room after check-in to receive their bag.

My hotel charged $5/bag, this is normal. I doubt they'll let you do it yourself as you need access to guest rooms. The alternative would be leaving them at the "welcome dinner" for people to grab on their way out (if you're having one).