Bridal Melt-Down!

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Well, it has finally happened: On Tuesday night I had my very first "WTF?! This is a total disaster" bridal melt-down.  I feel like a true bride now!! (heehee) We have a lot of guests coming from out of town. I was only able to book 21 rooms at our hotel for the moment, but was assured again and again that as soon as all the rooms in our block were booked, we could easily add on more as we needed them. I really wanted all our guests, and us, to be able to stay at one hotel; it just makes things less complicated for the shuttle and out of town bags, etc., so I didn't block off rooms at any other hotel and figured I'll just add on to here as I need them. But curiosity got the better of me over the weekend and I called the hotel to pretend to book a regular room for the night of our wedding. I was told that they were completely booked that night and had nothing to offer me. I then went online and tried to book a room online. Again I was met with the same result. I immediately left a voicemail with Deanna at the hotel and sent her a frantic email as well.

We finally touched base on Tuesday and Deanna confirmed that yes, beyond the rooms left in our block, the hotel was completely booked that night. WTF? I just talked to her last week about needing to add on rooms soon! She couldn't have given me a warning and at least mentioned to me that the hotel was booking up quickly and there weren't many rooms left?!?! Utterly useless.

Sooo all those invitations that went out on Tuesday? You know...with the hotel booking information? Useless to them, and I feel like a complete idiot.

Deanna and I emailed back and forth a few times trying to reach a resolution. I tried my absolute hardest to keep my snarkiness in check, though I'm not sure how well I really did. She said that once the other blocks are released on April 21st, some rooms could easily free up and at that time, she will add them to my block. So until then, I just have to hang tight. Eventually, I realized that I was going to have to start calling some other hotels in the area to block off more rooms for our guests in case we couldn't get any more. And guess what? Every single hotel I called in the area was COMPLETELY BOOKED!! After about the 4th hotel I finally asked them what was going on in the area that weekend because there had to be a reason! It turns out Hofstra University's Graduation is the day after my wedding and the school has reserved rooms at pretty much EVERY HOTEL for parents.

Had I been at home in a private setting, my reaction to this would have played out differently...but I was at work so I remained calm, and had several "inner" freakouts all afternoon: which in retrospect was probably better.

Finally, my knight in shining armor, Louis, from a Hampton Inn & Suites near our venue was able to block off 6 rooms for me with the promise that after April 21st, it is very likely he will have more rooms to add (I know I know...I've heard it before). It wasn't a lot, but it was something. And on the bright side, this was a hotel we had already visited last year and actually really liked.

So I put the new hotel information on our wedding website for our guests and if anyone has trouble getting a room, they will have to contact me and I'll help them as best I can in the next two months. It's very hard to say how many extra rooms we need for that night. Until we start getting rsvp's back we can only speculate.

Worst case scenario, there is a small hotel on our block that has 28 free rooms that night. So, if I need to direct people there temporarily, and then move them over to the other two as rooms free up, then that's what we'll have to do.

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If I could do it all over again, I would have blocked off rooms at the two hotels from the start and put both hotel's information on our invitations.We'd still have 20 rooms at a 2nd place for our guests to call right now. But you know what they say: Hindsight's 20/20 right? It will all work out, we have three hotels working to help us out and everyone will find a place to stay...at least that's what I'm telling myself to go to sleep at night.


Did you have anything like this happen to you that caused a mini panic attack?