Bride-to-be Blogger Carolyn: Blocking Hotel Rooms

Photo courtesy of ThinkStock.com.

Last week was a pretty big wedding-planning week. We got our engagement pictures back (more on that in a later post), shopped around at a couple more florists, and toured some hotels to block rooms. To be honest, I was originally pretty ambivalent about hotel choices. But then recently, we went to a wedding in Washington, D. C. that had an amazing hotel booked—so I became a little more invested in our choice.

The first hotel we looked at was in downtown Wilmington, and all the rooms were suites. The rooms were pretty nice, but the place was in the middle of construction and had that awful, headache inducing plastic-y smell, so our tour was pretty short. The construction should be finished by June, but we ended up vetoing the hotel as a viable choice because of its distance from Winterthur.

Next, we went to a smaller hotel that was a bit closer to Winterthur. It was nice, but the rooms were a little dated, so I wasn’t too excited about it (this Washington, D.C. wedding made me such a hotel snob!). After that, we went to another close-by hotel that was a little small for us to block rooms at, but may be a nice place for Chris and I or possibly the bridal party. There is a spa onsite, a cat-themed restaurant (love this), and they had free candy in the lobby. Too bad it was too small for all our guests! Our final stop was about 15minutes from Winterthur. The rooms were nice and it seems to be a pretty popular place. Sounds good to me! They even gave us free warm cookies—I was sold.

All in all, planning a hotel for guests to stay in is a pretty boring task, but one that is necessary if you have a lot of out-of-town guests like we do. After all, we do want all our guests to have a comfortable and enjoyable stay (with free cookies!).

What factors did you consider when blocking hotel rooms for your guests? Are you giving them a few options, or just one really awesome one?

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