Hello all! First time posting here and in desperate need of advice..
So my fiancé and I live on an island in the Puget sound area. We’re getting married on August 14, 2021, so a year an a half away.
We hired a wedding planner and found the perfect venue. It’s sort of like a resort but a lot smaller and we want to book the entire property for the wedding. If we do that then a lot of people would be staying in the rooms there and we could extend the wedding time to as long as we want it and party all night.
There are 28-30 rooms (I’m not 100% on the exact number) and we’ll be inviting about 120 people. The issue is with the room costs.
Technically we live in a “destination wedding” location, though we live here and so do our parents (minus my dad) and most of our friends. All of our extended family will be joining us from out of town. Most of my family is in Oregon and Northern California and my fiancé’s family is spread throughout the states.
We’re not sure of the exact room prices yet (we’re waiting to see if we’ll get better pricing) but it’s fairly expensive. To rent out the entire property it’s a 2-night minimum on the rooms.
There are three types of rooms (at this seasons pricing):
4 mostly-secluded cabins that are $550-600 per night
14 private hotel style rooms that are $350-400 per night
10(ish?) rooms in a small space that have communal bathrooms for $250-300 per night
I want to start reaching out to family members to see who will book rooms so we can be confident in renting out the entire property and not eat up the costs of vacant rooms.
What I’m asking is, is this too much to asks our guests to spend per night to join us?
The selling point would be that we would all be in one place, they wouldn’t have to find rooms elsewhere (and wouldn’t need a designated driver), and there’s a restaurant on the premises (so they wouldn’t have to leave the property if they didn’t want to). However, we wouldn’t be paying for all of their meals other than the wedding dinner. If they wanted food they would have to go to the restaurant on site and buy their own food.
There are other hotels and air bnbs nearby, but during peak season everything is expensive and it’s hard to find vacancy. We’ll provide other options as well (though no hotel nearby allows us to put a hold on rooms because of how busy the island gets during the summer) and not force everyone to stay where the wedding will be.
Also, is it tacky to reach out to people now and ask them if they’re open to staying at the hotel? I’m sure I have a million other questions too. But mostly if it’s a reasonable price point per night for guests.
