Booking accommodation for guests

[StrongInside]

Hi,

I am planning on having our wedding somewhere that is a 2-3 hour drive away from where we and our guests live. Nicer views, potentially cheaper venue etc. I would like to make a weekend of it, seeing how much planning goes into a wedding and how much it costs. Some only hire out their place for two days/nights minimum anyway.

One of my preferred venues is on a lovely estate with accommodation on site. They take the payment for two-night accommodation and venue hire together, but I want to ask my guests to contribute towards or pay in full for their stay (£80 a night for a large room plus access to a hot tub, pool on the grounds, games room etc., so not like a hotel room).

My question is, however stupid it sounds, how do I organise their payment and not miss out on the venue? The cost is too much for us to pay ourselves in the hope that all of our guests will attend the wedding and will be happy to pay. Many employers don’t let you book holidays until January so we don’t know who can make it.

I would prefer to leave it up to the guests to book their stay to fit their budget, but I haven’t yet found a venue without packaged accommodation that is affordable for us and ticks all the other boxes.

It depends on how many rooms you need to fill, can you speak to all of the key people first for their opinion. £80 a night per room is a normal price I assume it includes breakfast but is there other costs to pay for, Friday night, Saturday lunch?

I think you be lucky to expect people to pay £160 plus wedding expenses just after christmas. I'm guessing it's one of those venues whereby you get exclusive use of the venue and reduced rate on you're wedding package if you manage to fill the rooms ineffect you're guests end up subsidising you're wedding.

It's difficult. I paid for some of our guests to stay over at our wedding. I would object if you told me I had to pay. But if you said there was a limited number of rooms on first come first serve for £80 each (if breakfast was included then I might be interested... Although we are a family of 5.....is it for all the family ....as I wouldn't add £160 on top of a wedding for anyone except a very very close relative or friend. -- especially as you've already made us drive a few hours to get there. So is there really any choice of accommodation? If your guests don't pay for that where else can they stay?

I’ve just re-read my post and wanted to clarify, guests would need a day or half day off work to travel down, unless they want to arrive just before everyone goes to bed.

How many rooms do you have to fill, and how far in advance of the wedding do you have to pay the balance?

Hotels/wedding venues have it all worked out! Essentially you are having to ask your guests to pay for a certain number of rooms so you can have the venue of your choice, thus subsidising your wedding. I'd keep looking for another venue so guests can choose their own accommodation.

I wouldn't like being obliged to stay somewhere especially if it were for two nights. It may be a cheaper venue for you but it would end up costing your guests more in time and money. Is there really no where closer with good views.

I guess it depends how well you know your guests. Some people won't mind.

Is it £80 per person or per room? Do you get your room free? What happens with meals and booze? Will they have to pay the venue for all the extras? It might be that the prices are very inflated.

I would tread very carefully here. Agree with a PP and perhaps say there are rooms for most guests at a cost of £80 per head, please arrange with you - rather than telling them you have already paid for them and asking for the money. It needs to feel like a choice not an obligation.

My DH went to a wedding the other year where rooms had been paid for - he was asked for something like £200 for the night and we have no idea if that’s how much was actually spent by the B&G on the room or if they just rounded up ... The money wouldn’t have felt like a big deal if it was a choice but it wasn’t. Added to this, him and a few other guests were invited on their own without partners so not only were they obliged to spend the night and pay for it, they weren’t allowed to bring wives/girlfriends let alone kids. (Childfree wedding is of course fine but less so if you’re then forcing your guests to stay the night at their own expense rather than allowing them to slink away early). If you’re going to insist that people stay where you want, use a day’s holiday and make it a whole weekend thing I think you need to make sure you’re inviting not only partners but also children, otherwise it seems really cheeky to monopolise someone’s entire long weekend.

Sorry - not that you’ve said anything about who you are or are not inviting but that’s just an example of the thing you need to think about by making your wedding an entire weekend thing.

I’d roll my eyes a bit if I was asked to come to a wedding that forced me to use a whole weekend up and a day’s holiday and stay at the location the B&G has pre-selected for me, but I’s suck it up provided there was nothing else about the wedding that inconvenienced me.

You can't basically. What if most of the wedding party decided to stay at the £30 a night premier inn down the road? You can't book it in the hope people will pay because they might not.

Stucknoue, there are enough beds for all the guests (25 beds across all the bedrooms, or 30 if glamping pod/yurt things were needed as well), but one or two bedrooms have three beds per room, and we don’t have three single guests to put together so those room(s) will be used by couples.

I plan to provide breakfast (cereals, toast, yougurt or whatever else) in the house kitchen for two mornings and maybe on Friday night we could all chip in and order pizzas while using the games room/playing lawn games.

My dilemma is not only how to book my wedding without paying for potentially unused bedrooms which no one will pay me back for, but also how not to miss out on the wedding venue while waiting for the guests to decide on accommodation. We haven’t set the date or sent invites, this is literally just the start of planning for us.

What should I be asking the guests, would you be willing to pay for your accommodation? I don’t know how to approach it🤷🏻‍♀️

Henrysnoopy, our wedding is not for another year at least, not sure what you meant about Christmas. Out of curiosity and in case I’m forgetting something, what other large wedding expenses will my guests have? I don’t expect any of them to buy fancy new outfits and we would never ask for gifts.

We only have our immediate family and close friends plus partners on our list, so I hoped that they would see it as more of an excuse to do something fun together and less like subsiding our wedding. Maybe that’s just in my head..

Is it £80 pp/pn? So £320 for a couple and most of your guests travelling 2-3 hours? All so you, the actual hosts, pay less? Unless you were very close family (and mine wouldn't do this to their guests) I'd be declining the invite.

Henrysnoopy, sorry, meant to clarify, this isn’t that type of venue where they give us a discount on our wedding if we fill their rooms. There is no wedding package, which is extremely rare, it’s just a large house where we would have our ceremony outside on the extensive grounds or inside and then food in their dining room. Bedrooms are in the same house so obviously they can’t rent them out to the public while we are there.

The events team suggested themselves that usually the bride and groom ask their guests to pay for the bedrooms in their property. The only discount they offer is for mid-week weddings, but I think that would be far too cheeky to ask people to pay for their rooms AND take time off work mid-week!

It's such a tricky one OP as I'd be happy to pay £80 per night for a room - it's a lot less than most wedding venue accommodation - but I'm not sure how you gauge interest at this stage. Maybe just speak to immediate family and close friends. Do you need to have all the rooms sold to afford it?

User1474.., the way the property team broke it down for me was how much it works out per person (I guess so that I don’t freak out at the total figure). It’s £60 pppn midweek and £80pppn on weekends, with breakfast provided by us, but I think the facilities this house provides make the deal more interesting. We don’t have anyone with kids apart from two couples with a toddler each, so these two couples (as well as anyone else) could consider other accommodation nearby if it worked out cheaper for them. There are hotels, B&Bs and self-catering cottages in the area. I planned to provide a list of them at different price points to all the guests. Problem arises if most of them decide to stay elsewhere and I end up paying for an empty house.

Rookiemere, I have to pay for the house hire as a whole, irrespective of how many beds I fill. The balance doesn’t have to be paid until a few months before (can’t remember when exactly but not right away), but I would be still committing a substantial sum as a deposit and if later on half the guests can’t make it, we are stuffed.

Knittedfairies, sorry I wasn’t clearer in my OP, it’s a self-catering house with beautiful grounds so we have to hire it whole to be able to have our wedding there (no one can just book a room off the street for those two nights). I have looked for nearly a month now, and there aren’t any venues that are within our budget. Well, going to speak to a restaurant next week which would be a looooot easier - book it in full or partially, have our ceremony on their grounds and reception there too, then everyone off to their own accommodation. We wouldn’t be able to hang out in one place the following day though or the day before the wedding, which would be a shame after the drive.

We had to rule out any venues like this, sadly. There's no nice way to ensure people pay, they might prefer not to or not be able to afford to, and the pp/on way the wedding planners sell it is unrealistic. Depending on where you are, £80 a night could be competitive, but in most places, you'd be able to get a hotel for £160. A lot of people warned us that people will agree to stay and then change their mind later, too. We decided we could only do it if we could afford to pay for the whole venue and consider it a bonus if people paid to stay...

We still want a "come and stay with us for the weekend" vibe, but we've chosen somewhere more expensive than I wanted, so that people can choose to stay or not and our wedding isn't affected. I couldn't see how we'd do it otherwise, your budget could be massively thrown out if people don't want to stay, change their minds or can't afford to.

ReTooth, no, we would have to pay the same, but I would want our wedding night to be somewhere separate just for the two of us anyway. No extras to pay for.

Cookit, oh, I agree, so we are inviting partners and kids. Luckily, only three couples have kids (1 each). Thanks to you and PP for the advice on wording. The irony is, I’m not sure I would have paid that if I was attending a friend’s wedding unless they were my close friend. Some of the guests aren’t our close friends, they just happen to be part of the same group of friends, so they probably won’t want to pay that much and be away from home the whole weekend.
Man, I’ll end up with no guests!..

Boredbored.., I think you have made the decision for me, this is precisely what I needed to consider. I have this idyllic weekend of celebrations in my head which isn’t likely to happen in reality😕

BrokenWing, that’s fair enough. The more I read what I’ve written in the original post, the more I see how unaffordable this is for everyone.

Rookiemere, yes, venue hire itself is around £1800-2000 for the weekend (much less than most venues charge for a day) so I considered to be the cheapest I have found. But the accommodation adds another £3000+, depending on the day of the week and whether we use the glamping pods too. We can’t afford that.

Wedding planners will push these sorts of deals really hard but it causes no end of problems as the zillions of threads on MN will prove.

£320 is a lot for a couple to spend on accommodation for the weekend. A day off work costs me a lot- lots of people will be in the same position. Then travel, outfit etc. It will all add up.

The only way I think it could work is if you need a small proportion of guests (like 20% or so) to stay and the others can choose a B&B or Premier Inn or whatever.

Ah ok so it's per person so for a couple £160 per night or £320 for 2 nights for self catering. I think you'll struggle to fill it at that price and your issue may be that a lot of folks will be prepared to stay on the night of the wedding itself but less inclined to do so the night before, and that's a tricky discussion to navigate.

Unless you can afford to eat at least some of the cost , I'd be very reluctant to go ahead with this venue, particularly as you don't want to end up being a B&B hostess on your wedding.

we don’t have three single guests to put together

Please don’t make random people share a room with each other! It’s not a youth hostel!

Also, are you expecting your people with toddlers to pay £160 for the toddler to stay too? So £480 for the family of 3?

That’s far too much money.

AnchorDownDeepBreath, thank you for your input. I have made up my mind- it’s not for us either. I will maybe find a restaurant, although not easy to find one that isn’t in the middle of a busy city or that doesn’t have a high minimum spend. Then maybe hire an Airbnb nearby for our family and others can come hang out in the games room (if there is one) if they want. Hope your wedding day goes beautifully and the way you want it to😉

Thanks everyone for your input!

P.S. don't worry about these boxes you want to tick. Your guests are your guests because they love you and want to celebrate with you. That does not require an unaffordable but pretty venue!

Namechange.., by other boxes I meant I wanted a pretty and modern looking venue, no traditional red carpet/piper/band/wedding breakfast packaged in. I don’t know what I was thinking even considering this unaffordable venue!

I think u r wise to have changed your mind op. £32O per couple is £4800 for 15 couples. There is no way you can rely on that many people wanting to pay that much. I am willing to pay for accommodation to attend a wedding but not that much for self catering. Attended a lovely wedding where most guests stayed in a lovely near by inn. Stream, swans idyllic location very near wedding venue. Arrived night before, enjoyed great full English waiter service breakfast with other guests without anyone having to lift a finger, then was able to retire to room to get dressed in peace. No-one left clearing the kitchen mess. It cost £250 for 2 nights with an afternoon tea thrown in. As a previous poster said if I had been broke could have used Airbn or Premier Inn. You have no way of knowing for sure the financial status of all your guests. Plenty people these days are up to their eyes in credit card debt ext. Go for an easier option where you know in advance exactly what it will cost you and you are not biting your finger nails with worry about who is definitely paying and who might drop out at the last minute because of cost. Have fun choosing a safer option