You are engaged to be married and as the traditional bride to be often does, you have accepted and welcomed the role of primary wedding planner. Chances are you’ve already delved into the creative and exciting planning process and have your hands pleasantly full with various to do tasks. Catering companies, wedding cake tasting events, bridal dress shopping, music selection brainstorming, it can get overwhelming.
Before you get carried away in your fantastically wild imaginary dream world of lavish ideal wedding ideas, though, there is a particular wedding component that you might want to take care of well ahead of time, a particular constituent that is often overlooked until a more last minute occasion renders it necessary to address.
I am referring to the portion of the wedding plans that deal with your out of town guests. And more specifically, the measures you will take to assist them with their travel plans and lodging arrangements.
It should be noted here that orchestrating travel arrangements for out of state friends and family is not necessarily a given responsibility of the bride as wedding planner. Certainly, your guests can do it themselves.
Often times, though, and especially true for the out of town wedding guests who have never visited your chosen wedding city location before, they are waiting on you to give them information or suggestions about where to stay once they get into town.
Again, it is not something you have to do, but it is the more considerate option. If you must, ask your mom or sister to do it for you. Just so that those flying or driving in from another state have some direction in their planning.
It is really nice of your guests to pay for the expense of travel and time off of work to attend your wedding. Helping them plan their arrangements (minus the flight-as obviously that would be their responsibility alone) is a proper way to further demonstrate
how honored you are to have them at your wedding,
What information should you provide these out of town guests for their travel plans and options will vary depending upon where you’ve chosen the wedding to take place, but just think about it practically. Will your out of town wedding guests be visiting for a weekend? Do they plan to make this a vacation and stay longer? How close will the wedding festivities be to the airport and will you provide them transportation or must they rent their own car? Maybe your town has an easy public transportation service they
can use.
What hotel should they stay at? Preferably one that is in close proximity to the wedding event site(s). What type of lifestyle do your guests have? Do you think some might prefer to spend a little more money to secure a luxury hotel or would they prefer on the opposite end, something very inexpensive?
These are just things to think about. Surely you know of places in your area that would best suit your guests. Find a few and throw them in a list in a Word Document with contact information and price ranges to distribute to the people you invite who live elsewhere. An ideal info sheet, if you have the time would list the address of each event location (ceremony, reception, etc) and the airport address so they can use an online map program to get a better idea of the transportation plans they might reserve. Then maybe list your top choices of luxury, most inexpensive and in-between priced hotels with contact information. This way they can choose on their own.
See if you can call ahead to a few hotels and obtain a group rate discount for your guests. You can indicate that all right on the info sheet as well.
You don’t need to worry about sending this list to people until you’ve sent out your invitations. You may even want to send it along with your invitations. If not, some time afterwards. But you probably should call well ahead of time to find out about group rates at the hotels, especially if your wedding date is during a popular wedding season.
Again, you can get one of your fellow wedding planners to help you with the info sheet for out of town wedding guests if you want, or do the bare minimum on your own. It is just so you don’t end up with guests waiting around, depending on your suggestions to help them make travel arrangements and then end up at the last minute paying exorbitant prices on hotels. Because, again, let’s face it. Many of your guests especially if it’s a large wedding, have no clue what to expect as far as your wedding location’s transportation and decent hotels nearby. These people, you’ll find, just want you to lay it out for them. So lay it out for them. Nice and simply. They’ll really appreciate your courtesy and loyal friendship.
