Managing guests who do not stay at the wedding resort (and the "fee" associated)?

Hi ladies -

Do you have day pass fees associated with your wedding and if so, how are you managing/communicating with guests? We have a $99 day pass fee for any wedding guest not staying at the resort and we are doing 2 private events where we are already paying for guests per head - even if they are staying at our resort.

My FI and I are struggling with how/if to communicate this to guests. We don't want to force them to stay at the hotel if they feel it's too expensive, but we are also not going to pay $99/head per event + the fee we already have to pay per head for the private events (e.g., this would be about $275 if the guest stayed at a different hotel and came to the 2 events at our resort).

I feel like a cheapo even bringing this up to guests, but we did not budget for this extra expense nor did we have a destination wedding to pay $275/head! Yikes!

Is there etiquette around this? A good method?

well, we just put on our website that they were welcome to stay at other hotels, but if they wanted to come to the resort to hang out with us they would have to pay for the day pass of $80 per day...we let them know what that included...so far this has worked for us.

good luck!

Thanks Jess - that's a good idea! We also talked about sending one-on-one emails to those folks who haven't booked or whom we know may be considering staying elsewhere.

What about the day of your wedding/reception? Are you paying for anyone's guest pass?

I put the fee on our website and I had our travel agent informed guests so they have all been informed. My hotel was also informed so that they know they will charge the guests as they come in. Let's hope it runs smoothly.

We waited until we got people's RSVPs, and then when they indicated they were coming, we followed up with each individually to find out their plans. For the people who were thinking about staying off the resort, we let them know all the details then.

All of them ended up changing their minds to stay at the resort. The fees and rules weren't worth it.

There were very few of those people though - we didn't put anything on our website or offer any option to stay at a different resort, so those that came up with the idea, came up with it on their own.

Thanks for this info ladies. I was wondering how on earth I was going to let people know about the fee. I think I will let my TA know to tell them about the fees and send it out in one of the mailing updates.

This is a tough one and there is a thread on it. Most girls felt it was rude to ask someone you are inviting to pay the day pass, unless it was for persons that were not on list that decided to come were on their own. It was tough to ask them so in the end, we asked the hotel to do was to charge me the day pass fees onto my hotel bill, that way if they did not show, we would not have to pay for the no-shows.

I wasn't planning on telling any of my guests that staying on any other resort was an option