There have already been a few posts about people RSVPing, so I'll keep my RSVP rant short; we STILL have 100 out of 230 people unaccounted for with an RSVP date of 7/7. Those people include my dad & stepmom and FI's mom, all of whom apparently think I just like to waste stamps--YES I know they're going to be there, but why would I send them a SASE? And I still need to know what they want to eat!
Anyway, today is the deadline to book a hotel room in our block (and I provided this info on our invitations). I called today to see how many had been booked...the grand total is 3--my mom, FMIL & FGMIL! 4 if you count ours. We had 20 rooms held. We're not on the hook for the remaining ones (thank God), but I'm beyond irritated that no one else has booked it. There are at least 10 out of town couples who have already RSVPed yes and will need a hotel, but none of them have booked.
The reason we booked this hotel was that it was an awesome deal--$80/night. The rooms are pretty basic, but the hotel is new, clean, and you can't beat the price. The regular rates for the rooms at that hotel are $109. There are other slightly more upscale hotels across the street that offered us a reduced rate of $109, with their regular rates being $119. We went with the cheaper hotel to save everyone some money, but had I known that no one was going to take advantage of the reduced rate, we would've just gone with one of the nicer hotels across the street!
I've also bought stuff for 20 OOT bags that I can't use now--if people aren't in our block, the hotel has no way of knowing who to give them to at check in. And we had reserved a banquet room at the hotel for everyone to eat breakfast in, but now I'm wondering if I should just cancel it, as we won't have any good way of figuring out how many of our guests are there if they aren't in our block. Not to mention, we have a shuttle to/from the reception through the hotel. If our hotel ends up fully booked and they have to use another hotel, these people will also be without transportation to/from the reception.
I know people use travel points etc and aren't required to stay at the one we reserved....but the majority of these people are FIs friends, and we've all been at the same hotel together and had afterparties for other weddings, so I find it really unlikely that they'd go elsewhere (especially considering the shuttle)--it's just a matter of everyone dragging their feet. It's just so irritating that we spent a day looking at hotels, reserved a banquet room, and bought OOT bag stuff for nothing.
