Before I chose our wedding date, I checked all the event listings and calendars I could find for the Austin area, and couldn't find anything that coincided with our date. Shortly after I booked our date, I found out that there is not only a home University of Texas football game that weekend (how could I forget to check that?!), there is also a very large Texas school administrators conference happening, which means a large number of hotel rooms are already booked up or being held for the weekend.
Back in December, I booked small room blocks at two Austin hotels for the Friday and Saturday nights of our wedding weekend - one is downtown within walking distance of bars and such, and one is about 15-20 minutes south of town, on the way to the wedding site.
I found out back in April that the block at the downtown hotel was already full, and we were told we're not able to add more rooms to it, as the hotel was close to sold out and they couldn't offer any additional rooms at discounted rates. !!! The other one still had plenty of rooms available, but that hotel is not downtown, which I think is where a lot of our guests would probably prefer to stay.
I feel like we did what we could to suggest that our guests make their reservations early. We sent a cute little miniMoo card with a link to our website and a suggestion to book hotel rooms early inside our save the dates back in January. Our website also implores people to book hotel rooms early, as there aren't likely to be reasonably priced rooms available close to downtown if they wait until closer to the event. We've also told everyone we've talked to that they should book now, not later.
I suppose the guests who want to stay downtown will have to just seek out a room on their own, but they had better do it fast! We'll still run transportation from both of our suggested hotels out to the wedding site, but now it seems like a lot of guests will still have to get themselves to one of the hotels in order to catch the bus. I'm just concerned that some guests will wait too long and not have a decent and/or reasonably priced place to stay.
Ugh. Did anyone else experience this anxiety/frustration regarding accommodations for guests?
We've had the same issue. There's a massive medical conference plus the Ryder Cup. It wasn't a matter of not getting hotel rooms for us. It was that they cost a fortune! We told all our guests ASAP about the issue, so at this point, I've decided it's not my problem. Everyone is an adult and can figure out where to stay.
ReplyDeleteHi Molly - That is definitely the frame of mind I'm trying to keep. We told them all months ago to book well in advance... It will all work out, right? :) Hope it's working out for you too.
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