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We knew we wouldn't have a ton of people coming from out of town. 15 maybe? We've since released them all.
we have a lot of out of town guests, but many of them will probably stay with friends. We reserved 20 rooms (2 different hotels, 10 at each) just to be safe.
How does blocking off rooms work? Do you pay a fee, or they do it gratis? (Dumb question probably. :p)
I reserved 20 rooms at one hotel and 15 rooms at another hotel since I knew that half the guest list were out of towners. The funny part is that in total we had only 6 guests reserve at one hotel and only 5 at the other. We did have a lot of declines though.
we are reserving 15 each at 2 different hotels - one budget hotel, and one a bit fancier.
I reserved enough rooms for everyone because it's about 3 hours away for most people (more for others). We didn't have to pay anything. We just negotiated a room rate and the extra rooms will be released I think 45 days before the event? (This is the Hilton Garden Inn, for reference).
We reserved 20 and that was a high estimate- but we specifically blocked them with a hotel that didn't charge us anything to do so. In most cases, that just means that they release any rooms that haven't been reserved by 30 days to the wedding back to the public. Most times, people who reserve after that date can still get the blocked room price- there is just no guarantee that a room will be available. If your hotel will allow it (I could book up to 30 rooms with no penalty)- I'd book as many as you think your potential guests could need if ALL of them come. That way- you're covered if you need them and not out anything if you don't. Good luck!
@fiftyfootbride - not a dumb question at all!! How are we supposed to know that before we actually do it right? 
each place varies. With ours, we could reserve like 10 at a time, nothing down, and once they filled up they blocked off ten more. With destination weddings or high end hotels, many of them require about 10% down up front to reserve. Its typically refunded once a certain number of rooms are reserved. Ask the hotel's policy, but ther are PLENTY that dont require any deposit
Most of the wedding party, the groom and his family, and many guests were from OOT so we reserved 20 rooms for Friday night and 25 for Saturday night. This quickly filled up once STDs were mailed. With the reception in the hotel ballroom, a lot of people preferred to stay on site so we kept increasing the room block and ended up with 30 rooms reserved on Friday and 50 on Saturday. We only blocked rooms at the hotel where the reception took place. Due to alcohol being served at the reception, we wanted to encourage guests to stay on-site and the hotel block worked great.
We were responsible for filling 80% of our initial request by 3 weeks before the wedding (or we would have had to pay for unsold rooms). Some hotels do not have this requirement but we knew we weren't going to have a problem filling them so it wasn't a risk. Just ask at the hotels you are interested in. Although our hotel provided a reasonable rate, we also listed other lower-priced choices on our wedding website, though we did not set up a block at those hotels.
We think our number could be as high as 20 rooms so we reserved 15 - but they have to book early enough anyway that I don't think it will be a problem!
@KellyV You're right 
I doubt the hotels around where our wedding is will charge, but I know I need to get on the ball with blocking rooms. We have so many people coming from out of town, and a ton coming from Germany. (My FI is German, and so his whole family lives in Germany. It'd be bad not to have places for them to stay! 
)
I'm actually trying to figure out where to block ours off right now. I'm not really thrilled without the choices...
We had to guarantee 80% of the rooms would book and if they didnt we had to pay the difference. So we blocked 10 rooms for the Friday night and 15 rooms for the Saturday night and added rooms as needed. I think we ended up at 15 rooms for Friday and 25 for Saturday (220 person wedding and a lot of out of town people)
We considered 8-10 for about 20 oot people, but ended up getting a special rate at a hotel which allows the rate till 80 capacity and no responsibility on our part - we advised guest it was limited so to book sooner than later! We gave other options in case they missed out on the special one. The blocks scared me since it was about 80% responsibility in most hotels!
Our wedding is ~70 people. 14 of us are staying at a vacation rental. I reserved only 10 rooms at a nice hotel (the minimum), but it is the off season, so I'm sure there will still be plenty available if more people choose to stay at that hotel. Most will be coming from out of town, but many have family in the area, so I don't know who will bok a room and who won't.
We blocked off 25 rooms because all of my family will be coming in from out of town. The hotel had a couple incentives for us too...if we have 10 rooms booked they will shuttle anyone to and from the reception...if we have 15 rooms booked, the bride and groom get a complimentary room. It isn't a fancy hotel or anything (just a Hilton Garden Inn) but we bookeda jacuzzi room which I'm sure I will be thankful for at the end of a long day!
Our hotel is pretty small, so we just booked the whole thing. Another wedding was interested in it and we didn't want to lose the rooms or end up splitting the hotel with them or anything.
Not only is a lot of our wedding coming from out of town, but there are a lot of drinkers in my family, and they typically reserve a hotel room when we have weddings so that they don't have to drive home. Plus, we're planning on having the after-party in the hotel bar.
There was no charge or anything, but everyone has to be booked by May 15 or they let the rest of the rooms go.
@fiftyfootbride - Not a dumb question! I was wondering the same thing! Thanks for asking as now I have my answer. :)
I think we did 15 initially. They'll usually suggest a number to you. See if they'll call you and let you know when you're getting close to capacity (that's what we did). We ended up blocking an additional 10 rooms, and the ones that weren't booked were released a few weeks before the wedidng.
We had a destination wedding with 65 guests. We reserved 15 Friday night and 20 for Saturday and Sunday night (our wedding was on Sunday), so 55 nights total and we had to guarantee 80% of that. Our hotel also included all the nights for all the guests, like if someone stayed Thursday or Monday it counted towards our total. We ended up filling all 55 nights plus a few more.
Thanks ladies for your advice on this! It wasn't even on my radar. We just blocked off 20 rooms for June 17-21. They gave us a comp suite and a big ol' discount on rooms since we're doing it so far in advance. 79 bucks a night for their biggest rooms with hardwood floors and big fluffy beds. I'm pretty stoked. :)
So yeah, thanks again ladies.
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...was your block of rooms that you reserved?