You're in need of ideas for your wedding guests. You want to be sure your long-distance guests have the perfect hotel accommodations. Let's say you haven’t seen your best friend from college in about four years. She’s since had a baby, and well, life is never the same once that happens. You’re so excited to see her and celebrate your big day, but you know she’s flying to the East Coast with one or two connections from Arizona. You know she and her husband will be exhausted. Come to think about it, Uncle Ray said he’s flying in the night before as well on a redeye because he’s got a meeting he can’t miss. The list can go on and on. These people are special to you. How do you show them your gratitude for flying in for your wedding? We’ve got a few suggestions and ideas for your wedding guests and their accommodations.
Last June we planned a wedding for a bride’s family coming to NY from New Zealand. The groom’s family is from Scotland and the UK Each family was taking between six, and in some cases, up to 24 hours of non-stop traveling to spend the most special day of your life with you. The wedding venue was in NYC at the Gramercy Park Hotel. http://www.gramercyparkhotel.com.
The bride and groom were very keen on treating their friends and relatives just right. After all, these people are special to you. How do you show them your gratitude for flying in for your wedding? We’ve got a few suggestions.
It helps your out-of-town wedding guests to be as detailed as possible in sending their invites or a follow-up email, but then again, you can’t always rely on email, so we tend to favor including all details within the wedding invite. You’ll want to be sure they have all of the information they need as soon as they are invited so they can plan according (i.e, if they need to come in extra early because the stag party is the night before the wedding, etc.). Airline tickets, babysitters, appropriate clothes to pack, airports local to you, perhaps even things to do in the area should they arrive earlier and choose to spend more time after the wedding. In the case of the Scottish folks and those from NZ, you can bet after those flights, they were sticking around NYC for a while. So we made sure we provided a list of neighborhoods and their locations so wedding guests could decide what they’d like to see within the time frame they had available.
After room blocks were set up for your wedding guest accommodations (offering standard, king and suites), then the best part was arranged. We've got some more ideas for your wedding guest accommodations. To start, let's consider who got flowers, who received champagne, who received both? Who received chocolate-dipped strawberries, and who, because they were extra special, received Broadway tickets.... it can be so fun to spoil people. Check with your individual hotel (or hotels) as to what it offers and/or provide something that is "local’ to that region, be it wine, chocolates, skyscraper statues (scratch that actually), etc. Maps of the area, the concierge person’s name, and a hand-written welcome note are all things to include as well. If you know they love M&M’s, include those too ! Not everyone cares for the way NY water tastes, maybe a few bottled waters should also be included. By the way, not to be overlooked, this applies to Sweet 16 guest accommodations as well or any party where guests are flying or driving distances to come see you.
Now, equally important is arranging transportation as another means of accommodating guest by at least offering dependable car companies to take care of your incoming guests. Do they need assistance getting to the car, do they require baby seats or booster seatts? Try to think of all of these details. Best way to save money here ( if you’re covering the cost) is to see if you can arrange a car or two (or van) acording to when the bulk of guests are arriving vs. individual shuttles. We have used www.transexec.com for over thirteen years, and we love their service and services.
Once your guests arrive in/around the actual wedding day, you might also want to consider designating a detail-oriented friend or relative to keep track of flights and pick ups to be on call with any issues so that you and your groom can spend your time enjoying your day and certainly the following day as you head to your honeymoon.
Whatever fits into your budge is perfect. Remember, it’s not what you do so long as it is thoughtful and comes from the heart. What other ideas have you used and included in baskets for your wedding guests? Tell us on Facebook "Darling Events".
Comments, questions or need further advice? That’s what we’re here for.
