Weddingbee Blog

One thing I’ve learned from my wedding planning so far: things are never as easy as they seem.

For someone who is having a lot of out-of-town guests, I can’t seem to fill the 10 rooms required for group rates. Luckily, most hotels will give you some time to cancel the un-booked rooms prior to the wedding so that you don’t have to pay for empty rooms. Since most of my OOT guests will be Korean, or at least comfortable in a Korean setting, I wanted to set them up at a hotel on 32nd street. Their rates are very reasonable and it is right next door to the rehearsal dinner venue. How convenient! All I had to do was call them and book 10 rooms.

What a nightmare it turned out to be! First, I told Mr. Butterfly to call them because this was a task I had assigned to him. He called me back to say that the lady who was in charge of group sales wanted us to call in everyone’s reservations. That didn’t make sense at all, so I called her.

Now, I understand that contracts need to be set and signed prior to people calling in their reservations, and I even understand that they may not be as flexible as I want them to be. I was willing to put up with all of the inconveniences of pre-booking a block of rooms, but what I was not going to do was put up with this lady’s attitude. Talk about bitchy!!!

So, even though the contract sounded reasonable, I basically told her that she will not be getting my business and hung up on her. I’m sorry - I don’t expect anyone to kiss my butt or anything, but I do expect a little bit of courtesy!

I ended up going with the Avalon Hotel, which is also on 32nd street. They got pretty good reviews, and the sales lady was very helpful and prompt. We ended up getting 5 junior suites and 5 regular rooms, for the price of $259 and $229 respectively. Not too bad considering it’s Manhattan and it’s close to the holiday season.

Anyway, my point was this: all the things that I thought would be easy during the wedding planning process has tried my patience, whereas all the things that I thought would be difficult have been smooth sailing. I guess things never turn out the way you’d think, huh?