Hotel...CHECK!

Don’t you just love it when things are easier than you expect them to be?

Since this was NOT the case with my linens…deep, calming breath…I was worried that booking the block of rooms for our wedding at the closest hotel would also be slightly traumatic for me.

(I swear to you that the linens should NOT have been that hard to find! It’s NOT just me making this whole process more difficult than it has to be!)

After taking a look around at what hotels were available in the area closest to our venue, Mr. CC and I decided that the brand new LaQuinta that just opened in Kyle would be our first choice for hotel rooms. (Note: this isn’t the hotel where WE will be staying, but a good choice for our guests.) It’s brand new, with these really cute “old timey” looking oil lamps lining the drive. Kind of out of style for the normal LaQuinta.

It’s also the closest hotel to the venue, just about 3 miles away, so I won’t have to worry about people having a good time at our reception and then having to make a long drive out of the hill country to get to their hotel. And believe me, this WAS one of the factors in selecting our venue, as there were multiple venues that we looked at that were a little further out into the hill county with gorgeous rooms and settings for the wedding, but the thought of our guests drinking for several hours and having a general good time and then having to drive twenty miles to get to the nearest hotel, sometimes down windy, hill country roads just didn’t sit well with either Mr. CC or myself.

So with that decision being made, I sort of drug my feet about making the call to get the block of rooms actually, well, blocked. At first it was because I had a million other things going on, and in the grand scheme of things, this was one of the things that could wait for a bit. But reality snuck up on me last week when I made a visit home. Mama CC let me know that some guests were already tentatively looking to make their hotel reservations, and were asking some questions about our hotel choices.

Lucky for me, I had looked into it and knew that I could not complete the process online (or else it would have been done LONG before now!) and just had to call the reservations number for a group rate. Having never done this before, I wasn’t really sure how to handle it all. How many rooms do you block? What’s a good discounted rate? And then they want to know what will the arrival/departure dates be?

I didn’t really know all of those answers, but luckily, Jennifer (the nice LaQuinta associate who helped me over the phone) was there to save the day. Apparently there are some norms that weddings tend to follow and she helped me through the process. The only thing that Mr. CC and I didn't like so much about LaQuinta's procedures with blocks of rooms is that the blocks are released 21 days prior to the event for any unreserved rooms left in my "block." I know that they have to do that to ensure that they have as many rooms filled as they possibly can, it's good business sense, but that seems a little far out from the wedding for some of our guests. Hopefully, everyone that needs a room will heed the instructions that will be included with our invitations, and book their rooms early.

So, I’m happy to report that there is ANOTHER thing on my check list DONE! There is now a block of rooms at the LaQuinta in Kyle, Texas reserved for my guests under the group name of “Reis/Gross Wedding” at the special rate of $89/night. They even gave me a different 1-800 # for me to give out on my invitations, 1-866-527-1498. LaQuinta was VERY accomodating and easy to work with!

Easy breezy...man, things are FLYING off of my checklist at the moment. I need to keep up this momentum...