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I'm a little concerned about this as well. Too early to tell what people will decide as far as accomodations. Can you pass them out at the rehearsal dinner/ welcome party instead?
I have a similar situation. Most of our guests will be traveling from out of town, but a lot of them will stay with friends or family who are locals. I opted NOT to give them OOT bags, thinking that their accommodation hosts will feed them up and be available to answer any questions about how to get around. I will only be giving OOT bags to those who are traveling from overseas, as most of them have never been to Africa before. Of course they're also going to be scattered about, but it's a more manageable group to locate for delivering the gift bags.
I hadn't thought of this. Thanks for the heads-up. I'm only going to do OOT bags for the people who stay at the hotel where we blocked rooms. Other people are on their own. However, I think I picked the most reasonable hotel to reserve. If people are going to splurge on a fancy place, they can spring for their own breakfast treats and ask the concierge for local info.
Oy! 10 different hotels? I'd scrap the entire OOT bag idea at that point.
Hmm, unless you were having some sort of "Welcome BBQ" or "Welcome Cocktails" then you could just hand them out to the couples there? That's a lot of traveling to hand out the OOT bags... What a wonderful hostess you are :)
Whoa...10 hotels...that's alot. My fiance and I are thinking of nixing the OOT bags. We've blocked rooms & yes his family is from the UK & will be coming over and staying at the hotel & I'll have friends & family there as well but I'm unsure how important they are. I've received many and honestly I end up throwing more than half the stuff out because I don't want to travel with it. We are hosting this extravagant wedding with other weekend plans to share, unsure if the little OOT bag is really needed. If anything, we might just give a bottle of wine to those that attend a welcome party.
Just pass them out early! Let everyone know you can pick them up at the rehearsal or have them sitting out or something, assuming everyone is invited to the rehearsal dinner simce they're all OOT.
We did OOT and drove them around to 4-5 different places, skipped the last one because it was just too far. I wanted to do the OOT to thank everyone who came from out of town for the wedding (and make sure they had all the info they needed!), but at some point you have to be sane. Pick 1 or more places for OOT bags if that is what you want! Having a recommended hotel or two at most helps :)
Wow that sounds like too much work!! Hopefully all my guest will stay at the one hotel my Fi and I will be staying. We listed only one hotel on our invites and I did do price checks and our hotel was about the same as everything else in the surrounding area.
10 hotels! Why guests think the bride should be waiting on all of them the whole wedding?
Exactly why I decided against this idea. Nice in theory, but once it gets too complicated, forget it!
carpinteria? montecito?
anyone staying in gaviota?? That would just make it even across the board I guess!
I like the idea of welcome bags but since SO many ppl are coming fro out of town, I don't know if it will be feasible. We may just give them to ppl who get rooms at hotels we block rooms at.
Well I've got people staying all over the place. Some in hotels, camp grounds, rented houses and bed and breakfasts. I'm not going to do for all of them. I'm just going to make a hanging tag for the hotel doors that says, "Part of the wedding party" They can hang it on their doors so that they can meet each other before and after the wedding and have people to carpool with or grab a drink with over the weekend.
Our friend has offered to make our goodie bags for our golf and wine outings.
I'm only doing OOT bags for people renting cottages through our venue. Most people will do that. If I only have two or three using their own houses, I'll just bring them to the cookout we're having the night before.
OOOh I love the idea of hanging tags for the guest of weddings. I seen just for bridal party when getting ready. But this is even better!
I blocked rooms in a certain hotel, and if I do OOT bags, it will only be for people staying in that hotel... way too complicated otherwise. ;) Although I think it's too complicated anyway, and I probably won't do it!
We did OOT bags and delivered them to 8 different hotels. We found the rest of our guests at the rehearsal or brunch. If the guests notified us of where they were staying, we tried our best to find them. People will stay where they want, or where they can afford, and I was happy they made the trip. The groom and the groomsmen put the bags together and delivered them, in part because they were spread out among the hotels too. The furthest was probably 20 minutes away, but they had to go near there for the tux rental, etc. The groom complained a little, but he also knows that the guests loved the bags and did not expect them.
I'm doing OOT bags only for the people staying at the hotel we're reserving a block of rooms at. I'm not driving all over town and I'm not chasing people down to see where they are staying. And if they are staying with family/friends, then they don't need the snacks in the OOT bag.
We're planning on doing OOT bags for everyone, and we are aware of the fact that we may have guests staying at quite a number of places. However, all of the hotels should be in approximately the same area as each other. We're getting married on an island afterall, so nothing is too too far away from each other. I'll probably enlist a few people in the bridal party to help deliver the OOT bags, and hopefully we can get them all out in an hour or 2. Maybe that's overly optimistic...
I'm also doing OOT bags for each room. People are mainly staying in rental cottages or villas, all within about a ten minute drive of one another. About 18 different rooms or cottages at five different properties (for 20-something people). So it's not a huge big deal. I FedExed all the loot for the bags down to the island months ago.
I mean, if I could spend weeks on end browsing, for instance, just the perfect hair ornament, I guess I can spend a few hours doing this for people who've traveled a long way.
(Tho if there were ten different hotels, and hours of driving, I'd probably be freaked out and give up, too.)
We reserved a block of rooms at a local hotel, and are only providing OOT bags for the people who are staying there. I cannot possibly imagine driving to ten different hotels to deliver bags!
That's why you do a room block at, at most 3-4 hotels in the area in a variety of price ranges and then tell your guests. This also will get them a 'special rate' which is nice too. :)
-Bella
We didn't do OOT bags. But we did rent a big house at which all our guests could stay, and provide all meals for them for about 48 hours. I don't think they missed the OOT bags. 
We're not giving our guests an option. It's one hotel and that's it. Stay somewhere else and you're on your own as far as I'm concerned. We're blocking off rooms and they get a discount, etc.
I couldn't imagine having my guests spread out amongst 10 hotels. Yikes! Good luck!
We did OOT bags, but only for the two hotels that we had blocks of rooms at. A handful of OOT people stayed with friends or family, but we figured they'd be taken care of.
OOT bags are wonderfully thoughtful and a lot of fun to put together if you start early enough (a visit to your town's visitor center is a good resource for local goodies & brochures of things to do to include). I envisioned that the bags would be a great first impression of the weekend and felt like I was being a gracious hostess by providing them. In hind sight...I think they're a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have. For those considering them, if you have extra money in your budget and someone else you can delegate to take care of these then go for it, otherwise I'd skip it. Seems like distributing these would be a no-brainer exercise, but you need to be ok with the following if you do provide these bags to the hotels for your guests:
- A guest may not receive a bag (hotel forgets to put in room or misplaces bag)
- Guests may not receive their bags until some time the day after they arrive (if the hotel doesn't want to leave the bags in the rooms before check-in in case the guest arrives early/late and gets a different room)
- Guests may complain about the book you so thoughtfully put in there to help them pass the time on their 10 hour flight home
- You may not get a Thank You from most of the guests no matter how much thought you put into the contents of the bags
One hotel was enough for me...9 hotels - you are one REALLY gracious hostess!!!!!!!
that sounds like too much stress. I would leave the bags with the front desk and have them give to the guest when they check-in (they might switch or move rooms and there goes that bag) for everyone else not staying at hotel, have THEM pick it up at your hotel when they come for the rehearsal dinner or any other activity you have planned.
We dropped bags off at 5 hotels and gave them out personally to anyone staying in the hotel with the room block. It didn't take that long and we just drove from one to the other. We put some important information about the wedding in the bags (addresses, times, notes about parking) so we wanted to make sure everyone got them.
I'm SO glad I don't have to deal with this! All our guests are within a few hours of our venue! Good luck!
We had the majority of guests staying at one hotel and had their bags given to them when they checked in. The others we gave out when they came to the welcome party. Everyone was there so it was pretty easy!
You guys are right. The OOT bags went out. It was because my mother, MIL, husband, and me all disagreed on where guests went. My mother insisted that these VIP's that wouldn't stick with the program would get the bags. Thank goodness for my cooirdinator.
My rehearsal dinner had 80 people so I couldn't bring them there.
If you can pick one hotel for room blocks, I think that's cool for OOT bags. My family was ridiculous and that was the problem. ;)
But I'm married now and in light of that, all these details I worried about just don't matter. So keep that in mind!
oy! That's crazy! i was thinking of giving them out when people stopped in for the Welcome Dinner on Friday night. That way, people can pick up their own bags and get a meal at the same time :)
You're such a sweet girl for going through all that trouble. I really hope you're guests appreciate all your troubles.
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Egad! I could not get my guests to agree on hotels and I am sending my coordinator out to 8 different hotels in Santa Barbara. I am bringing them to the ninth and I am skipping the tenth which is very out of the way and has two couples. I just can't do it all.
Guest bags may not be worth it if the guests can't agree on a hotel to stay at! My mother said the middle of Santa Barbara to her friends. I said cheap and in the heart of Santa Barbara to my starving artists, FI said Montecito, and MIL said 1/2 an hour away in Carpinteria! Egad!
Beware before you enlist this project. My team couldn't agree!