As a newly married couple, the chances are you will be spending your wedding night in a lavish and luxurious honeymoon suite, but what about your bridal party? Unless you are getting married very locally, it may be hard for them to get home; the taxi fare could be more than the cost of a hotel room, so they will probably need wedding night accommodation too.
Here are seven top tips on accommodating your bridal party:
- Before you start looking into accommodation for your bridal party, think about whether you actually want to stay in the same hotel as them. Do you want the morning after your wedding to be an intimate time for just you and your hubby, or do you have visions of carrying on the party over breakfast with your close friends and family?
- Check what accommodation is available at your venue. If your wedding venue also provides accommodation, check how many rooms are available and see if you can get a discounted rate. Your immediate bridal party should have priority on the rooms at the venue, followed by any out of town guests.
- Look for accommodation close to your reception venue if you can’t actually stay at the venue itself. Ask the venue for recommendations and see if they have special deals with any local hotels. Make sure you arrange transport from the venue to the hotel if it isn’t possible to walk there. Hire a minibus to transport the bridal party to the hotel, or ask a local taxi company to have cars waiting at the venue at a certain time.
- Be aware that your bridal party may have spent a lot of money on your wedding when you take into account hen’s and buck’s nights, wedding outfits, gifts, and transport. With this in mind, try to choose a hotel that won’t cost them an arm and a leg. This might mean compromising on the type of room you stay in yourselves, but if you want to stay at the same place as the rest of your bridal party it will be worth it.
- Although you don’t have to pay for wedding night accommodation for your bridal party, it can be a nice gesture, and many couples are choosing to do this rather than buying a thank you gift. You may be able to get a good deal with the hotel or venue which means that a night’s accommodation doesn’t work out much pricier than a present.
- If you decide to pay for your bridal party’s accommodation, make sure you keep it fair. If you pay for a room for the best man and partner, you will have to do the same for the maid of honour and partner. If you pay for accommodation for the parents of the bride you should do the same for the parents of the groom. Unless you have a huge wedding budget, paying for accommodation for junior bridesmaids and ushers will be just too expensive.
- Make arrangements as easy as possible for your bridal party by finding out how to get to the hotel, what time they can check in, and whether they can park there in the morning and get a taxi back to the ceremony location. It may be the ideal place for you and your bridesmaids to get ready on the morning of the wedding, so check whether it is possible to book a room for that purpose.
