Paying for your guests?

[Disneybride2386]

Is anyone paying for hotel, air, or themepark tickets for their guests? Or is everyone responsible for everything besides the wedding day themselves?

 

[Island Mouse]

We're paying to fly three bridesmaids and a flowergirl from Hawaii to Orlando for the wedding. Let me tell you, it is not cheap . We also rented a 1 BR villa at the BWV for the bridesmaid to share for 3 nights during the wedding. Fortunately we are DVC members and we used points for all of the rooms for them and us. As far as the rest of the guests, they are pretty much on their own as far as air, hotel, and tickets. We have been thinking about doing a welcome dinner for everyone, though.

 

[newyearsbride]

We are sharing the hotel with the BP (with really cuts it down for them... about $100 a piece), paying for their hair and makeup for the BP, and for the guests we are taking care of several dinners, but most of the guests have time shares, so they're doing their own thing for the rest.

 

[JaxTeach]

I paid for my cousin's plane ticket, but she's a "poor college student." Everyone else was on their own for transportation and lodging. DH's family were the only one's who stayed at Disney resorts. Our friends stayed @ the Dolphin and DTD Hilton. My family stayed at a vacation home.

We did pay for everyone's Welcome Dinner meal @ 'Ohana. On the wedding day, they had to drive to the Boardwalk but we provided transportation after that. They had more food than they could imagine at our reception & DP.

 

[B2B-2008]

We are paying for our families first week in florida, 8 people, they are all paying the extra to stay for the second week. We offered to do this as our close family would have never been able to pay the cost of getting over there. My brother is also a Disney hater so its a bit of a bribe so my nieces will finally discover the magic of Disney

 

[Beep]

We are paying for 2 nights at the BWV for my parents so they can be near us and we also can use their room to get ready in as well as our own. We are paying for everything on the wedding day but not entrance to Epcot as we figured most people would have at least a 3 day ticket.

All our guests (except one) are coming from the UK so the wedding is a day in their holiday!

 

[OceanGdss]

Most of our guests are local. (with the exception of about 6) So everyone is responsible for their own travel/lodging. We're not having a welcome dinner, though with 99% of the family being in the wedding party, most of them will be at the rehearsal dinner. I am paying for my BM's hair & makeup, but thats it. With 75 guests it would be too much to host anything or pay anything.

 

[roseviolet]

Call me cold hearted but my guests are on their own. It's not like I'm forcing them to go to Siberia, they're going to Disney World!! We are hosting a welcome dinner and a few meet us if you want to, but pay for yourself type of things.

 

[lurkyloo]

The only guest we paid for was our pastor - we covered his flight and hotel so that he could officiate at our wedding. There was no way we could have afforded to cover everyone else, so we made it really clear that they were under no obligation to come. We also sent out lots of emails with money-saving tips - for instance, I found a screaming deal on plane tickets from LA to Orlando over our wedding weekend and emailed everyone to let them know about it.

 

[IndyBride]

We are not planning on paying for anyone's trip. Some of them are just flying to a different place as they were out of town guests already. Many are probably going to turn it into a vacation. I would if I were them anyway!

 

[Ember]

We paid for the bridal party (5 people): flights, hotels and park passes. That was about $800 - $1000 each. And then we picked up the flight for an aunt who he really wanted to attend but couldn't afford it. That was another $400...

To be honest, if I could go back, I wouldn't have been so generous. That may sound bad, but I don't think people appreciated how much we had to save to have them there. I gave up my dream of Cindy's carriage and having characters and there were two people who didn't even say "thank you."

 

[disprincessatheart]

We're not covering anything but the day of the wedding. Everyone that we invited was excited to go and is just making a week out of it. We did 3 day park tickets as Christmas gifts this year for immediate family - more than we would have normally spent, so I guess we did in some way do that for the wedding, but we got to use it as a double gift.

 

[D&R love Disney]

We paid for a few things like town car service for MOH and BM and some tickets. We also had a catered fireworks cruise for the night before the wedding for our guests.

 

[IndyBride]

We paid for the bridal party (5 people): flights, hotels and park passes. That was about $800 - $1000 each. And then we picked up the flight for an aunt who he really wanted to attend but couldn't afford it. That was another $400...

To be honest, if I could go back, I wouldn't have been so generous. That may sound bad, but I don't think people appreciated how much we had to save to have them there. I gave up my dream of Cindy's carriage and having characters and there were two people who didn't even say "thank you."

I can't beleive some people didn't even properly thank you!! That is crazy to me.

 

[WithDisneySpirit]

We are covering lodging for over twenty of our guests to include our officiant (hometown minister and original officiant ). We are all staying at villas and studios at OKW. We will feed everyone the night before the vow renewal at an OKW pool party. My mom and dad are treating everyone to a character breakfast the morning we leave too. Everything else is pay as you go...

 

[cappygirl]

We had a hospitality type room open all day the day before the wedding with food and drinks but other than that....they were on their own for everything.

 

[wendy46001]

We paid for one groomsman, but he couldn’t afford the trip from Cali....(Med student)...So that was flight, hotel room 3nights, tux, food, etc etc......most everyone else was on their own...BMs got one free hotel night as did groomsmen (but they all shared and it was more to keep track of everyone)

Rehearsal dinner was for all guests ….not my first choice but turned out fun …also not everyone’s flight came in on time and some were to busy playing in the parks….

We also did a farewell character breakfast the day after... that is all we covered for the general guest

 

[Chilly]

At the moment no we won't be paying anything but I hope that if we save enough we will be able to help out our Best Man and Bridesmaid as I think they will struggle with the cost.

 

[sajilunni]

We bought into Disney Vacation Club specifically so we could put up everyone in our VR (12 guest plus the 5 of us). I figured out that the cost of renting a week of a 3 bedroom villa and a 2 bedroom villa was half the cost of buying the points needed to cover it. So sponsoring one more whole-family trip in the next 45 years will make the DVC pay for itself. Although we've never been to WDW, everyone seems to rave about it, so we figured it would be a good investment.

We're sponsoring our entire family with accommodations and meal plan during our stay. None of our siblings nor my parents would be able to afford the kind of trip we're planning on their own (my inlaws could afford it, but I thought it would just be easier logistically to pay for it all ourselves). All the family members are responsible for their own flights down and park tickets, which is within their vacation budgets. Since they might all have different ideas of how much time they want to spend at the parks, I didn't want to dole out the money for 7 day park hoppers that would largely go unused for their intended purpose. We could realistically afford to pay for everything, but I didn't want to make my loved ones feel like they've lost all their own autonomy with the situation, or that we're lording our money over them. I'm a pretty frugal gal, so I put it in a way that we're just doing it in the most frugal manner to get the biggest bang for our buck.

Whether you are paying for your guests totally depends on the financial situation you are in, the financial situation they are in, and how close they are to you. There is absolutely no set rule, at least in my opinion. However, if you can't afford to sponsor them, and they can't afford to go on their own, there should be no hard feelings between you two.

Money is always a tricky situation to talk about. Do you know the financial situations of all of your guests? Is it something you could seek advice from your parents on how to approach with your guests? WDW is out and out an expensive proposition for the vast majority of Americans, so it would be a good idea to find out how your guests feel about it. Our best friends' friend (does that make sense?) is getting married in Hawaii, and many of the guests are resentful for the financial imposition that is being asked of them. But I think if it's something that the bride and groom really want for themselves, then they should go ahead and do it, but not have any expectations from their guests when it comes to attendance.

Good luck!
Jil

 

[Starr W.]

We'll be using our DVC points to house family members when we get around to doing our VR. My sister and about 2-3 of my cousins could afford to put themselves up in a deluxe, the rest wouldn't go and as we are looking to do a Wishes VR it will help with the room night guarantee.

By the time of my VR, I'll have more points as we are eagerly awaiting the new DVC at Contemporary!

We have debated park tickets, but may look into doing some meals(welcome dinner and a farewell brunch).