Destination wedding 2013

kleblanc88

Hello!! I'm fairly new to posting, here's my background:

My fiance and I are planning our wedding either June 16, 2013 or June 22, 2013 at the Shades of Green (military resort) hotel in Disney World!  My goal is to get the invitations out by March 2012 giving guests ample time to see if they can afford to save and travel with us.  

My question is, when should my RSVP date be?  If some family members cannot attend I want to be able to send other family memebers an invitation but I am unsure of how quickly I should make the RSVP date. 

ALSO, if our wedding is on a Saturday we plan on traveling on the thursday before the wedding and I want to find out if my guests want to travel the same day.  Would it be appropriate to put on the RSVP card a spot for them to say which days they plan on traveling  and how many nights they would be staying?? I only ask this because some airlines offer a group discount when traveling together AND I need to have a block of hotel rooms for the hotel and they obviously will need to know the nights the people are staying - etc. 

Any opinions are great!

jtoly

Beautiful resort, I was there two years ago. I think that sending a formal invitation out a year in advance is too early. Most ladies here send out STDs and you could get feedback from that. It would be very unlikely for guests to know if they would be able to attend a year in advance. Sometimes situations change with people and that would be too far out for people to know. As far as sending invites out to certain people and if you get no responses and then send invites out to others, I think, wouldn't go over well. I know that if some of my family members got invites and I didn't, but then got one later I would think that I wasn't first choice on the guest list so I wouldn't go. Good luck with you planning.

kleblanc88

True true 

Then on the STD cards mention the location of where it would be??

BMcLeodTeam

Hello and welcome to the board
I have my STDs on my planning bio if you want to view them!

I did a card style STD that had a short note from FI and I giving them the date and location. I also had a magnet inside. This had on it our names, the date and our wedding website.

I then had a website together that they could visit with the more detailed information about the location, how to book, other nearby resorts they could also stay at (cheaper in some cases), etc

jtoly

I was just going to suggest looking at the girls on the board's bios since they all have great ideas and examples! A great idea is to do a wedding website to have all your info for your guests to view. This is a great spot for a destination wedding so you will get a lot of help here. Where at the resort are you getting married? Have you been there before?

kleblanc88

My fiance and I have actually been there once together and he had been there with his family one time before he and I met.  The hotel is gorgeous and have so much to offer.  And since it is a military hotel they have great deals for our guests.  

Thanks for the website idea thats actually a great idea for our guests to keep up to date! 

I'm just nervous about getting a block of rooms thats my main concern. 

BMcLeodTeam

Find out with your block contract how many you are required to fill. I know I am blocking a bunch of rooms but I only have to fill a certain portion of them, the rest are just released on a certain date if not reserved.

jtoly

The hotel is great and I know a lot of military book in advance so I'd see why you'd be concerned with the blocking of the rooms. Maybe you can block an Amt your comfortable with and then if you don't need as many you can let them know. I'm not sure if you already checked with the resort, but I know when we went we were only allowed to reserve three rooms under my FIs military ID. They have a rule three rooms to a sponsor. Is it different for weddings?

minionlover

Congrats and welcome! Like the other said, I would send out save the dates. I would put the location of the wedding on them too. You should also check out the marriage requirements, I am not sure if they vary by county. I know that FI and I are getting married in Palm Beach County and there is no waiting period for non-FL residents. It might be the same. Stick around. We would love to hear more about your planning.

WinstonsGirl

We spoke with our families to ensure they could join us and from there just let our friends know over a year in advance so they could plan if they wanted to come.  We're just over 2 months out at the moment, and we still have people who don't know if they can make it yet or not.  If you send out invites now, you will have a lot of people with changing plans.  

I have the same question as Jenn - can you block rooms for non-military?  From the hotels I've had experience with, I was under the impression that they were military and immediate family only, but I could be wrong.   

kleblanc88

I've been to the hotel before and you can reserve up to 3 rooms per military personnel. BUT I'm not sure about weddings. I chose the wrong day, MLK day to get started doing full research because no one was in office! We have my fiancé and his step dad for sure going do that's 6 rooms total but that's not enough. We need atleast 9 or 10. Now I'm running into the problem of my fiance's mom... She's trying to take our cheaper room rate and pawn the more expensive room rate on family members SHE doesn't like! [higher ranking members have higher rates at the hotel] it's making it extremely difficult to think about planning because shaes trying to call all the shots. I think if they are staying at the hotel THEY should pay THEIR rate!

jtoly

Don't let anyone run your wedding planning. Your right about the rates, plus that's how the rules are so maybe just mention you wanna go by the rules of the resort.

kleblanc88

I know! She's been trying to run the show since the beginning - and she never even said congrats to us from the beginning.  The only thing she said to my fiance was "really tyler...really"....so you can see the support there.  It's really hard to deal with
Everything looks like it is going to work out with the hotel - I got back in contact with their coordinator and it looks like the only 'snarl' we are going to run into is we will be one room short.  We will be able to block 9 rooms total - 3 for my fiance and i and 6 total for  his step dad and mothers alotted rooms with IDs.... I'm hoping with just needing that one extra room the coordinator will just allow us to have one room extra - they're only going to be there for 4 days!