really need to vent... kind of long

bpphoto785 · February 2012

I usually don't do this but I REALLY needed to vent. I'm so mad/angry/frustrated I don't even know where to begin.

FI & I decided to have a hotel wedding since the majority of our guests are OOT. We booked this lovely boutique hotel for our wedding weekend and told them from the day we booked (December 2010) that we would probably need to block the majority of the hotel. They were really excited about it - why wouldn't they be? We're giving them a weekend of business and it's not coming cheap!

Now the person coordinating our rooms sent me a room report and we've booked 23 rooms and have 9 left in our block. I reply suggesting we add more rooms since we haven't even mailed our invitations so the majority of our guests haven't booked. She replies with SORRY WE CAN'T ADD ANY MORE ROOMS TO YOUR BLOCK!! and suggests we book an additional block at another hotel.

Even if we set up another block (which is not ideal) we already printed our invitations telling people to book at this hotel. We can update our website but I know it's going to create a problem.

This was Thursday and I am still so pissed off I can't stand it. What makes it worse is that FI isn't even upset about it. Luckily my Mom is being EXTREMELY supportive, she even offered to drive up here (a 3 hour drive) to deal with it if she needed to.

I sent an email to the hotel saying we needed to find a solution to this and am waiting for a reply. In the meantime it's driving me nuts.

soon to be mrs pham · February 2012

oh my id be just as mad! hope it gets resolved soon!

AurorasEnvy · February 2012

Totally annoying, and I understand your frustration, but from what I understand this is pretty common at hotels. I am not having a hotel wedding, but both of the hotels we used for blocks would only give us 15 rooms maximum at each hotel.

We are inviting 209 people, and literally 99% of our guests are OOT enough to require a 1-2 night hotel stay.

If they won't budge, and you are concerned about it, I might suggest doing what I did - I was concerned because our main hotel (where we are paying to have a reception shuttle go to/from) only has about 100 rooms, and I found out there were 3 other brides who already had blocks for the same weekend as my wedding! I wrote up a short email explaining the situation, and suggested that if people wanted to take advantage of our shuttle (in your case, taking advantage of staying at the hotel your wedding is at) book rooms in advance otherwise you can't guarantee they are going to get a room if they wait. I forwarded it to all my friends, family, and had MOB and FMIL forward it to all the people that I didn't have e-mails for. It worked, last time I called to check (maybe a month or two ago)? We already had 40 rooms booked - and this was 1-2 months before the invites even went out.

It could do 2 things - make sure your guests have rooms, and send a message to the hotel that they are going to get business from your wedding and maybe make them loosen up about adding a few more rooms to your block in the meantime. Like I said, it is annoying, but as a business I can see where they don't want to block off the majority of their hotel with nothing but your word that the rooms are going to get filled, and in the meantime might have to turn down guests who have their credit card in hand.

cpm1223 · February 2012

I'm having the opposite problem and I'm getting really frustrated!!!

We are having a wedding in another state (not too far) so its a semi-destination wedding and we've blocked off some rooms at the hotel right next to the reception location figuring it was easier for the guests so they can party all night and just walk over to the hotel....but the hotel has a 2 night min. so almost all of our guests are choosing to stay at a hotel about 5 miles away becasue they can stay just one night...which defeated the purpose of blocking off these rooms at the hotel near the reception.

I understand that it costs more to stay at the hotel we blocked rooms at, but its supposed to be a destination-ish wedding and we were going to have an after party type of thing at the bar next door...and now I'm not sure if anyone will be around to be there with us!

Sorry for going off on my own vent....back to your problem:

I'd just book another bunch of rooms somewhere else, and maybe spread the word about it if anyone who hasn't booked their room asks you what they should do if the block is full.

bpphoto785 · February 2012

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-club-boards_may-2012-weddings_vent-kind-of-long?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding Club BoardsForum:f0ca0bc1-9255-4120-8042-b40e7f3e99c5Discussion:b751ac7f-24d1-41c4-bba9-f1bb77256afaPost:4243eaf6-033f-4188-96e6-d9e06846f770">Re: vent... kind of long</a>:
[QUOTE]Totally annoying, and I understand your frustration, but from what I understand this is pretty common at hotels. I am not having a hotel wedding, but both of the hotels we used for blocks would only give us 15 rooms maximum at each hotel. We are inviting 209 people, and literally 99% of our guests are OOT enough to require a 1-2 night hotel stay. If they won't budge, and you are concerned about it, I might suggest doing what I did - I was concerned because our main hotel (where we are paying to have a reception shuttle go to/from) only has about 100 rooms, and I found out there were 3 other brides who already had blocks for the same weekend as my wedding! I wrote up a short email explaining the situation, and suggested that if people wanted to take advantage of our shuttle (in your case, taking advantage of staying at the hotel your wedding is at) book rooms in advance otherwise you can't guarantee they are going to get a room if they wait. I forwarded it to all my friends, family, and had MOB and FMIL forward it to all the people that I didn't have e-mails for. It worked, last time I called to check (maybe a month or two ago)? We already had 40 rooms booked - and this was 1-2 months before the invites even went out. It could do 2 things - make sure your guests have rooms, and send a message to the hotel that they are going to get business from your wedding and maybe make them loosen up about adding a few more rooms to your block in the meantime. Like I said, it is annoying, but as a business I can see where they don't want to block off the majority of their hotel with nothing but your word that the rooms are going to get filled, and in the meantime might have to turn down guests who have their credit card in hand.
Posted by AurorasEnvy[/QUOTE]

We've more or less done this through word of mouth. We're only inviting 100 people so 23 rooms is a lot for us. Now depending on how things pan out we'll send an email to people like FI's groomsmen who haven't booked their rooms!

I understand they're running a business, but if they had told me 14 months ago that they couldn't accommodate the amount of rooms we needed then we would have set up another block and included the information with our invitations. What's upsetting me is that it's a problem now, 3 months before the wedding.