I opted to have my wedding on Long Island because while I no longer live here, I did grow up here and most of my family is still on Long Island. However, FI's half of the guest list is really more like 60-70% and so we are having quite a few travel in for the wedding. We started looking at hotels to recommend and I am
shocked by the high prices. To stay at a hotel in Riverhead is over $250 a night - for a Holiday Inn Express - not even a fantastic hotel. I can't find any hotels under $150 and most of the hotels I do find have mediocre - to - poor reviews on sites like yelp. Plus, my FI is pretty adamant that we spend our wedding night at the same hotel that we recommend for our guests. I just wouldn't look forward to a wedding night at a 2 star hotel (hopefully I don't sound too spoiled here - definitely not my intention).
If anyone has good recommendations for hotels in the area that are both nice and reasonably priced I would love to hear about it.
As a source of comparison, FI and I just went to a friend's wedding in a city (so no need to rent a car) and we spent just over $100/night for a very nice hotel and there was still talk about it being fairly pricey among his friends. I'm afraid that we've chosen a location that will price most of our friends out of attending and that would make us really sad.