Asking your guests to stay where?

irishvegas

We are having our wedding and reception at the cosmopolitan hotel. I don't want to tell our guests to stay at the cosmopolitan because it is a more expensive hotel (checked a group rate $290 was the minimum cost for friday $310 for Saturday) I want my guests to get the best deal and stay where ever they want. Some guests wont have a problem with that, other guests will need help in finding where to stay and costs.

What are all of you doing as far as your wedding websites and telling guests where to stay? Cheap group rates somewhere? Are any of you putting your guests at a hotel your wedding isn't at? Luckily the cosmo is in the middle of the strip so they could easily stay anywhere.. Help! i need to finish my website with some kind of helpful information! 

khristiana

Hi there!

We got a discount code for people wanting to stay at the same hotel we're getting married at, but we let everyone choose on their own where they wanted to say. The strip isn't that large, so basically everyone is in the same area.

Good luck!

aggiespartan

We got a block at Aria where we are staying, but if people ask us for other (cheaper) options, we are helping them find better deals.  We have been to Vegas several times, so we know what places are cheaper.  We didn't block a ton of rooms because we aren't sure how many people we are really going to get.  At Aria, we reserved 20 rooms of various sizes, and we have to book at least 10 of them to keep the group rate.

aggiespartan

"The strip isn't that large, so basically everyone is in the same area."

This is true to some extent, but if you are on opposite ends of the strip, that walk can be a %($).  Especially if you are fancied up.

amelisha

Mine is not at a hotel chapel and we're only expecting about 16 guests. I just told everyone where we're staying and said we'd love to see them there but to please stay wherever they like. If anyone ends up at the other end of the Strip it won't be that difficult to get them all in one place for limo pick up. We just want everyone to do whatever is going to make a nice vacation. As long as they turn up in our lobby at 2PM on Saturday, I'm good.

khristiana

@aggiespartan True! LOL

sassyshosh

I am staying at the Cosmopolitan as well, and that is where all reception activities will be taking place. To be honest, I didn't even block a group rate anywhere because I don't think I can hit any group minimums at any one hotel (our guests are looking at tons of hotels).

For Cosmo itself I was able to price match for my parents and my FI's parents bringing them prices 40% off, but I have only ever been able to do that one weekend in like 7 months. Many are choosing to stay at Cosmo just using the 15% promotions that have been going on.

For people that don't know where to stay, want a cheaper option but to be close to Cosmo I advise Vdara. Vdara lacks the amenities like a casino and dining options of the rest of the City Center hotels so it makes it more inexpensive. Plus the location is great for guests hanging out at Cosmo anyways, plus Vdara looks beautiful. You can get an additional 20% off with promo code VRSM2014F.

vegasgroom

We got blocks at MB, Luxor and Excalibur, but also put coupon codes from smartervegas on our website and recommended guests use those instead, which made all three much less than the block rate.  If guests don't want to go by recommendations, it's easy enough to find things based on price; some of ours stayed at Tropicana.

Closest hotel to Cosmo that is cheap is probably Ballys, although for the money, I'd rather stay at Flamingo.

irishvegas

a lot of the coupons on smartervegas.com right now want the arrival dates by December or February. Since my wedding is in May the coupons arn't current yet. I could recommend not booking until january? or just recommend them to keep checking the website?

missbruiser

@Irishvegas  your guest could always book now, then in January check to see if they find a better deal.  If they do, they can cancel their old reservations.  

hmgiffor

We got blocks at a high, medium, and "low" hotel. That way our guests can determine the type of experience that they want to have and pay for. 

Ndelible

We still have the old TI block, but that was always high.  There are many searchable deals much lower than that now.  MB is listing $115/night.  That's pretty goo and without coupons.  We are posting rates we hear about on our website.

wrigleyville

We had a section on our website that grouped hotels into "tiers". I had links to hotels that were under $100, $101 - $150, and $151-200. I also included links to sites with coupons, Groupon, etc.

I also included a link to a map of the strip so people could see how close the hotels were to where we were staying. I listed our top three suggestions, based on location and price. About half of our guests had been to Vegas a couple of times, so that helped a lot too.

We only invited 40 people, so we didn't reserve any blocks. Most people I know have their "favorites" in Vegas, so I knew we'd have people scattered all over.

Our ceremony was at Imperial Palace (now The Quad), and our reception was at MB. We had people staying at MB, Flamingo, Golden Nugget, Wynn, Circus Circus, Luxor, and Caesar's. It was kind of crazy.

vegasbride2015

Well we are staying at the Trump, and through VRBO/Homeaway, and I highly doubt our guests will want to stay there. My FI's family has discounts through Marriott, so they will likely go there, and I think my family will likely end up renting a home through VRBO/Homeaway off the strip somewhere. Not sure where my MOH is staying, she was adamant on getting her own room even though I offered to find her a room in the Trump and pay for it.

It is something I am a bit concerned about, but at the same time, I really do NOT want to be in the same hotel as our families, we would like our privacy. If it were up to my FI, our families wouldn't even know where we are staying, but I am planning an in-suite dinner the night before the wedding.

irishvegas

Is your website still up? would you mind PMing me the web address? Sounds great, I just havn't seen that anywhere and i need a visual!

-Thanks! 

samanthacain

Tahiti Village is right down the street and is super reasonable. It sounds really cheesy, but it is actually pretty nice.

hashtaggroomzilla

my fiance asked our wedding party to stay in the same hotel (Aria) and everyone else can stay wherever. 

americankorean

We are getting married at Paris, and we're having our reception at the Cosmopolitan. We recommended our guests stay at Paris, the Cosmopolitan, Vdara, Bally's, and Alexis. We figured these were all close enough to easily walk and covered all of the price ranges. Additionally, it gives people options who aren't comfortable staying in a hotel with a casino (some of my more religious family members). I hope this helps!

myriah505

I just got married at TI a couple weeks ago, and let me tell you one thing I wasn't expecting or prepared for was how difficult it is to manage so many people at once and try to arrange gatherings before and after the wedding. We had about 19 guests, a big enough group to make arranging get togethers tough, and small enough to have to make sure no one was excluded. It helped tremendously to have everyone at the same hotel (we got a block at TI). I seriously would have lost my damn mind if everyone was staying at different hotels, it would have made everything 10x more complicated. 

I don't know how people handle it, having everyone stay here and there and everywhere. That would have driven me crazy. 

tcnoble

We are only blocking rooms at the hotel where our ceremony/reception is just because we know our guests and it's more in their budget. For some guests, of course, they can afford more and are looking on the strip but we didn't block any rooms. I know some hotels require a guarantee with their blocks and if you don't fulfill it you can get charged, which we didn't want to deal with. We are encouraging our WP members to stay at the hotel site just for the ease of the rehearsal/dinner, etc. as PPs have stated it can be difficult to get even the smallest group together if they are spread out too much.

amelisha

myriah505 said:

I just got married at TI a couple weeks ago, and let me tell you one thing I wasn't expecting or prepared for was how difficult it is to manage so many people at once and try to arrange gatherings before and after the wedding. We had about 19 guests, a big enough group to make arranging get togethers tough, and small enough to have to make sure no one was excluded. It helped tremendously to have everyone at the same hotel (we got a block at TI). I seriously would have lost my damn mind if everyone was staying at different hotels, it would have made everything 10x more complicated. 

I don't know how people handle it, having everyone stay here and there and everywhere. That would have driven me crazy. 

I'm not worrying, personally, because I'm not doing any other get-togethers for the whole group other than the wedding/reception. We want our guests to have time to do their own thing. We'll see everyone, but we're doing more like "pool time with our friends on Friday morning", "tea for me and the moms on Thursday afternoon", that kind of thing. I'm a former travel agent who's booked many destination weddings and I really fear overscheduling. So that's my reasoning for my own group.

I'll keep my phone on and i'll answer it, as well as letting people know what our plans are as we see them/speak to them, but other than that I just don't want to be herding cats the whole time. It's not my idea of a relaxing vacation to have to shepherd a group. And my group would need lots of shepherding, lol. "I want to go to Cirque!" "Reverse happy hour!" "Fremont Street!" "Wynn buffet!" "Poooooool!"

KrisLSmiley

We had a block of rooms reserved but I also found a 30% off rooms code on the total rewards site for another hotel. That turned out to be less expensive than what I was quoted for a group so we went with that.  I still have the block for the other hotel but everyone except for 2 couples are staying at the same hotel that had the 30% off including us!  So look around sometimes there are deals that are better than what the hotels quote you for groups!

Ndelible

KrisLSmiley said:

We had a block of rooms reserved but I also found a 30% off rooms code on the total rewards site for another hotel. That turned out to be less expensive than what I was quoted for a group so we went with that.  I still have the block for the other hotel but everyone except for 2 couples are staying at the same hotel that had the 30% off including us!  So look around sometimes there are deals that are better than what the hotels quote you for groups!

Absolutely true!  Our old block at TI was one of the highest in town.  That seemed kind of ridiculous.

fitnik07

I used http://www.hotelplanner.com to book our block at Vdara. You submit your dates and the number of rooms and the hotels bid on your request. A bonus is that we are not responsible for covering any unused rooms.