Weddingbee

Planning a wedding can be quite hard on the ’ole money belt and, for me, every penny saved goes a long way. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve scanned my online budget spreadsheets to see if I could shave off a couple of hundred dollars here and there. I have one condition for any money-saving schemes, and that is never to compromise quality or hospitality.

I’m a firm believer that if you work hard enough and conduct enough research (glory to Google), you can save money without compromising your “dream wedding”. An example is the growing cost associated with lodging for guests and even yourself. In our case, we have a bunch of OOTers coming in from a number of states. We had agreed that we would pay for two nights of lodging and it would be a great help to us if they could pay any extra nights. Of course, our home is always open to them. As a ballpark figure, given that at least five families are coming from out of state, and that we will need hotels for the bridal party, I would say that we will need about six rooms for two nights, equalling 12 room charges. Now that can really add up if you think about it.

One resource that I’ve found, and used excessively in the past years, is discount travel websites. Yes, I’m talking about the cheesy Shatner commercials and the annoying traveling gnome. Out of the cornucopia of online travel websites, the sites that I have come to use more often are Priceline, Hotwire, and TripAdvisor. All three of these websites have been around for quite some time now and I have probably taken over 40-50 trips booked through these sites. Since I am focusing on hotels, I want to also introduce my most coveted resource for reserving hotel rooms, Betterbidding. Before I explain how Betterbidding works, let me cover Priceline and Hotwire. Both Priceline and Hotwire are websites that either buy blocks of hotel rooms across the world at discounted rates or use third party services to get discounts. In any case, you save money going through them. Are there any drawbacks? Sure! Well, for one, you probably can’t get any of those neat-o loyalty program points from hotel reward programs because you aren’t going directly through them.

So how does it work? Let’s take for example, Priceline.com. When you log on to priceline.com, you see a wide number of options to choose from like: flights, hotels, cars, vacations, and cruises. Since we are looking for a place for our guests to stay, we’re going to click on “hotels” (easy, ain’t it ?!). So from here, you can enter in all the necessary information and get a list of hotels with competitive pricing, but that’s not where you save the big bucks.

If you look on the priceline website, you will see a “Name your own price” icon, that’s basically the “X” that marks the spot of the treasure chest. You’re going to want to click on that. Now, you enter the necessary information and you will be taken to a screen that shows you a map of nearby destinations.

In step 1, you pick all the areas that you want the site to search rooms in. In step 2, you denote what room star rating you are looking for, and in step 3, you name a price that you are willing to pay. OK, so what’s the catch? Well, you don’t know exactly what room you are going to get, nor do you know what hotel chain you will receive from. If your bid is accepted, you will be given a hotel room that is in one of the areas that you requested and retains a minimum star rating, which you chose earlier.

What I recommend is take the price of an average room at that star rating and in the specified area, then take 50% off of that and bid! After you submit your bid, you will be taken to an initial confirmation screen.

Then it’s time to initial and move on to enter your credit card information. Remember: you are now in a binding contract if you win, so it doesn’t matter if you don’t like the hotel that they give you, or your plans change, or you simply had a guest cancel. You’re committed.

OK, so then the system searches for a room, and if you succeed, you are shown a screen like this:

Else, they just tell you that you didn’t receive a room.

So this post was supposed to helpful, right? That’s where Betterbidding.com enters. Since Priceline.com doesn’t tell you what hotel you are staying at until you successfully bid for it, the nice folks at Betterbidding.com simply record what areas they have bid on and the star rating, how much they bid, and whether they were successful or not. How cool is that? So for example, when you log on to Betterbidding.com, you can scroll down and pick your state, or city, and find submitted Priceline requests and whether or not they were successful.

This takes some of the guessing out of sites like Priceline or Hotwire. For example, you could go to “California”, and then go to “ORANGE COUNTY - PRICELINE” and I could see all the recent bid wins, such as this:

3* Orange County (Costa Mesa-Irvine) Doubletree Santa Ana
$45 … 8/8/08-8/10/08

So now, when I go back to bid on these sites, I have a very good idea what I will get if I bid in the same amount and the same dates. I will, however, say that no system is perfect and there may be a chance you may not get that same exact deal or hotel, but it’s worth a try.

Another great thing about Betterbidding is that they have a compiled list of every hotel that Priceline and/or Hotwire uses, based on user submissions. This can be a great option for those that are looking for a specific area.

Here’s my ultimate tip: Let’s say that you are bidding on a hotel in, let’s say, Los Angeles. So you bid, and you’re cheap like me, and wind up with a message like this:

Now what this is, is Priceline telling you that your bid is not accepted and if you want to bid again, you must change your search criteria by either a) lowering your star rating, or b) adding more areas. This is probably to prevent any search flooding. Well, why would you want to increase the area and possibly risk being farther away from the destination of your choice? Well, this can actually work to your advantage. Let’s say you are looking for a 4-star hotel in Los Angeles, near the airport, and you bid too low. Priceline then asks you to change your criteria. At this point, you can just go to Betterbidding and scan their Priceline list for the hotels in the areas nearby Los Angeles. Find an area that does not have a 4-star hotel on Priceline, such as Santa Monica, and then add that area. This way you are not gambling anything because Priceline can never hand you a hotel that is less than the star rating that you are bidding on (it says so in their policy). So basically, you have one more shot at it. Keep adding more areas that don’t have a 4-star hotel and you will get more chances to get the hotel you want. Also, using the Betterbidding hotel list, you can also have a really good idea of exactly what hotel you will be staying at.

I hope some of this made sense and also will save you all some money. Remember, embrace the crazy and fun resources that the internet provides for your own wedding savings. That, and be a cheapskate, albeit secretly.

Any tips for great deals on wedding accommodations out there?  Share with us in the comments!

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