Weddingbee Blog

I love our venue. Really, I do. And I love that they have a boutique hotel attached to it. It works so well for so many reasons, and I’m incredibly excited about it.

BUT.

I do not love the way they handle room blocks, because it stresses me the hell out. You see, they’re one of those hotels that punishes you if all of the rooms aren’t booked. You have to sign a contract for a certain number of rooms, and if you don’t manage to fill them all, you get to pay for them all. Awesome, right? I thought about just ditching the idea of blocking rooms there and block them somewhere else, but there aren’t many hotels near our venues, and most of them are also small hotels, which I assume will mean they’ll have a similar policy.

I was terrified to actually commit to a number of rooms, but they make it somewhat easier by offering blocks by the “villa” rather than just a room.

There are three “villas” (basically, three separate buildings) and each has anywhere from 12-17 rooms. If you block an entire villa, your guests are the only ones who have access to the villa (you have to have a key to enter the building), and they will also have a cute little lobby/hang out room where they can visit. It’s a really nice set-up, but I was scared to actually pick a villa and commit to that many rooms, especially when it wouldn’t be my credit card attached to the rooms - if we don’t book them, it’s my FMIL who has to pay up! Talk about stressful!

Finally, Mom Cardy, FMIL Cardy, and I sat down and made out a list (actually, we made three. Because we’re thorough) of who we knew would book a room there, and who might book a room there. With the people we absolutely knew would want one, we were at about 14 rooms, so we figured that it would be safe to book a villa. We decided on the “Central Texas” villa (appropriate, since we live in Central Texas!) which is the biggest one with 17 rooms. Funny that I was terrified to commit to any and we ended up booking the largest one, right? Well, our family is huge, and once we made the list(s) we were pretty confident that we wouldn’t have a problem filling it up!

One thing I love about the hotel is that each room is named after a city in the area the villa is named after. So, for example, our villa has rooms named after cities in Central Texas! Cute, right? The rooms are a bit country for my tastes, but it’s fun and I think our guests will enjoy it. Wanna see*?

The lobby of our villa. Only our guests will be able to hang out here, which I love!

One of the King bedrooms (they’re all decorated differently)

The King bathroom

Every room has either a patio (if it’s on the first floor) or a balcony. This is an example of the view the balconies have! Gorgeous, no?

Another thing I love? Upon booking our wedding at Vintage Villas, we were guaranteed the use of a suite on our wedding night for Mr. C and me. That’s awesome, but we weren’t going to be able to use it - you see, we’re going to have to stay at a different hotel after the wedding, because our flight leaves early in the morning and we’d like to stay a little closer to the airport. HOWEVER, when we were blocking the rooms, I talked to the wonderful woman helping us and she agreed to let me and the Cardy bridesmaids use the suite on the night before the wedding instead, at no extra charge! What’s even better? The name of our suite is the Austin suite - perfect, right? It’s very cute, and I’m super excited to spend the morning of my wedding here:

The living room of the suite - there is a King bedroom through the door on the left, and a HUGE bathroom for me to get ready in!

I love that there’s a table in there - should be very helpful for last minute DIY projects! There’s also a wet bar that’s not in the photo. I’m very glad this all worked out, because the bridal suite in the venue is pretty small, so we’ll be able to have some more room here for most of the day, then we can move to the bridal suite before the guests start arriving.

Where did you stay/will you be staying the night before your wedding?

*All photos from Vintage Villas’ website.