etiquette on out of towners?

Dartmouth09

My fiance and I are planning a Texas wedding for next year. He's from England, I'm from Texas but we both went to college abroad so our friends and family will be coming from pretty much everywhere. We are wanting to have our wedding at a kind of campgrounds where you can reserve the whole site with a minimum number of cabin rentals.

What is the etiquette on these cabin rentals? How do we insure that people make their reservations, and are we expected to pay for them?

andy71781

You can reserve a block of the rooms and tell your guests how to make their reservations.  Some places will make you pay a deposit up front to hold the rooms.

Your guests may choose to stay elsewhere.

TurtlesAllTheWayDown

It probably depends on their policy. Usually when you block a hotel you ask them to set aside a certain number of rooms for your guests to book and the guests pay for them themselves. You'll have to see what the minimum number is, if you can "block" that amount, and if you can afford to make up the difference if not enough people book rooms. Normally, OOT guests pay for their own travel and accomodations. However, that can vary slightly, like if you're renting out a whole house for the weekend and having a small wedding, you can ask people to stay there for free.

Also, would this be the ONLY option for guest accomodations? As long as they are an OPTION and guests are required to stay there (like they can stay at a hotel if they prefer), it's find to give them the information and let them book on their own. Just make sure you have them tell the reservation people they are with the Smith/Jones wedding. If you do want absolutely everyone to stay there? I wouldn't recommend forcing your guests to do anything, but... in that case I would pay for the whole thing.

I would suggest sending out a save-the-date card with this information on it so people can begin planning travel, and including a "travel and accommodations" card in your invitation package as well.

danieliza1127

Hmmm, that's interesting and tricky.  I would probably first poll your very closest friends and family and see if this is something they would be interested in.  Would they have to share cabins or could single families or couples be in their own cabins?  For example, I would be fine with it if it were just me and my H or another couple that are our good friends, but I wouldn't necessarily want to stay in a cabin with 15 people that I don't really know that well.

You wouldn't be responsible for paying for the cabins, but you'd want to be sure you have enough interest that people would actually book them if you did reserve them ahead of time.

carrieoz_76

You can encourage guests to stay somewhere by doing a block for them, but you really can't make ppl stay at a particular place unless you pay for their expenses to stay there.  But if you get immediate family and friends on board (preferably the reliable ones), then maybe you can meet the minimum.

I agree, though, that there should be other options.  For instance, my dad's family wouldn't stay in a rustic cabin.  They're more fancy hotel ppl, and they just wouldn't be happy in a cabin.  So hopefully you're not so far out in the boonies that there aren't also at least one or two hotels that guests could stay at instead.

rrkenney

A friend of mine did something similar, she was able to hold the rooms until a date and then it opened up. It was great for guests because there were festivities on site for a few days before and the day after. Unfortounately, I wasn't able to go.