Finally hit the wall (sorry! a little long)

Ok, it's my turn to officially have issues! For starters, I'm planning my wedding and travel plans myself. The only coordinator I have is my resort planner (who won't email me back, but that's another issue!).

When I was first engaged, I signed up with destinationweddings.com and it wasn't a good experience. I had two different travel planners who made everything difficult for me--from confusing my wedding plans with other brides to continually giving me incorrect information about various resorts I was trying to research.

Ultimately, I ended up negotiating the contracts and group rates for both the resort and airfare myself and I think I did a great job under the circumstances. The thing I missed most about using DW was the idea of my guests being able to make payments on the wedding trip online, etc. Well, I decided I would do it all myself and added payment capability to my wedding website via Paypal.

Things have gone fairly smothly, except I had the hardest time creating the payment buttons (since I'm not an expert in html code, etc.) but I finally figured it out and got them working. Well, I just realized that Paypal charges a small fee on each transaction that is made. For example, I tested the buttons and paid $1 to make sure everything was working properly. How about a .33 fee left only .67 cents in my account! I knew there would be a fee, but I didn't think it would be that much! That .33 is a BIG dent out my dollar! How much will the fee be on the $969 per couple for the wedding trip?!?!?!

I need all of that money to pay for the wedding trip. I created a wedding account and attached it to Paypal specifically for that purpose. I can't allow my guests to use the buttons and have Paypal take huge chunks out of the payments! FI and I are paying for this ourselves and our budget is small! Now I don't know what to do because my wedding website and the STDs that I sent out last month all say that payments can be made online, and my guests are starting to RSVP and want to begin paying for the trip.

I feel like I've backed myself into a corner with this and don't know what to do. I need another way to allow my guests to pay for the wedding trip. I even considered asking them to mail payments to me (and I could deposit them into the wedding account), but I don't know how tacky that would be. I wish I could afford to just subsidize the difference ourselves, but I'm afraid it will put us far beyond our budget.

At this point, I'm REALLY missing having a travel agent/wedding coordinater to help me sort through this mess, but I don't think I can afford one at this point. I need help ladies!

At this point I would definately deactivate the button until you can figure it out. How many people are on your list? If it is only a few, and you feel comfortable with it, then call them and explain. I don't think anyone would expect YOU to eat 33% of their bills just to make payments easier for them.

Are you paying for the trip and the guests are paying you? If that is the setup, if you didn't have the button, they would be mailing you the check, so I think reverting to the original way isn't tacky.

Hmmm, I think you can still get your guests to pay you via paypal, but just in a different way. I know I can sign into my paypal account & send a friend money with out a fee. What if you do it that way?

since you are getting married at such a big resort (Sandals) can you get in touch with their corporate office and set up a payment account?

BTW - i am confused as to why guests are paying you anyway

googlecheckout has no fees associated until 1/1/2008 - then it's 1.5% transaction fee per transaction. Add on the 1.5% as a convienence fee if you'd like & let your guests know. Paypal's fees are 2.9% + so much per transaction.

Quote:

Originally Posted by IrieBride08 Ok, it's my turn to officially have issues! For starters, I'm planning my wedding and travel plans myself. The only coordinator I have is my resort planner (who won't email me back, but that's another issue!).   When I was first engaged, I signed up with destinationweddings.com and it wasn't a good experience. I had two different travel planners who made everything difficult for me--from confusing my wedding plans with other brides to continually giving me incorrect information about various resorts I was trying to research.   Ultimately, I ended up negotiating the contracts and group rates for both the resort and airfare myself and I think I did a great job under the circumstances. The thing I missed most about using DW was the idea of my guests being able to make payments on the wedding trip online, etc. Well, I decided I would do it all myself and added payment capability to my wedding website via Paypal.   Things have gone fairly smothly, except I had the hardest time creating the payment buttons (since I'm not an expert in html code, etc.) but I finally figured it out and got them working. Well, I just realized that Paypal charges a small fee on each transaction that is made. For example, I tested the buttons and paid $1 to make sure everything was working properly. How about a .33 fee left only .67 cents in my account! I knew there would be a fee, but I didn't think it would be that much! That .33 is a BIG dent out my dollar! How much will the fee be on the $969 per couple for the wedding trip?!?!?!   I need all of that money to pay for the wedding trip. I created a wedding account and attached it to Paypal specifically for that purpose. I can't allow my guests to use the buttons and have Paypal take huge chunks out of the payments! FI and I are paying for this ourselves and our budget is small! Now I don't know what to do because my wedding website and the STDs that I sent out last month all say that payments can be made online, and my guests are starting to RSVP and want to begin paying for the trip.   I feel like I've backed myself into a corner with this and don't know what to do. I need another way to allow my guests to pay for the wedding trip. I even considered asking them to mail payments to me (and I could deposit them into the wedding account), but I don't know how tacky that would be. I wish I could afford to just subsidize the difference ourselves, but I'm afraid it will put us far beyond our budget.   At this point, I'm REALLY missing having a travel agent/wedding coordinater to help me sort through this mess, but I don't think I can afford one at this point. I need help ladies!

I my experience paypal fees are 3%. I know it can vary, but 33% is way too high!

Why do you say you can't afford a travel agent? There are plenty of travel agents who don't charge you anything. They actually save you money. Their pay comes from the airline/ hotel. My TA (and any good TA) is charging us less than any deal I can find online (& I'm pretty good at finding deals.) We also have so many perks using her. Even though you have already sent out your STDs you can still change things. They have to go to your website to pay so you can put all the new details on the website.

Everyone has good advice. If it's not too late I also say check into a TA - I've never been charged for using one. In fact, with a large group like yours a TA would LOVE to have your business )

With paypal, if you set up a premeire account (i think that's what it's still called) where you can accept credit card payments, you get charged a fee. The fee is supposed to be like a credit card transaction fee, but it will get applied to all your transactions.

If you set up a personal account, you don't have to pay fees on every transaction, but can only accept 5 credit card payments a year I believe, and that fee is higher than the business account fee.

It's a pain, because when I sell on ebay, I get slammed with fees from both ebay and paypal. It sucks.

You can view the difference between accounts here:

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/we...p-fees-outside

I would contact a TA, I think its your best option and guests can usually make payments.