Travel Savings Tips For Wedding Guests
By Brian Williams on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 :: 3:59 pmCategory: Watching Out 4 You
Weddings are expensive for the bride, groom and their families. It is also expensive for their guests, even if they are not in the wedding party. In-town weddings are easier on the budget.
But if you have to travel, costs associated with airfare and hotels can mount quickly through airfare or gas and hotels. Plan in advance, and do not turn to high-interest credit cards to fund you wedding trips.
Spring and summer are popular seasons for weddings, and you may have invitations for a few for next year. Therefore, you can start putting away money now for the special nuptials of your dearest friend or close relative.
You may be on an extremely tight budget but do not want to disappoint anybody by missing their wedding because you can’t afford to make the trip. As an attendant of 20 or so weddings, most of them out of town, I can offer some tips.
Airfare
Web sites featuring cheap airfares are abundant in cyberspace. The earlier you book a trip, the less it will typically cost. Plus, this way you will get a chance of getting better seats. While you may be able to get Internet airline deals close to your departure date, it is a risky chance. Bear in mind, if the wedding you plan to attend gets cancelled, flight cancellation fees and rebooking can be steep.
Driving
Find a fellow wedding guest and drive together. I shared a trip with a friend on a six-hour drive to a wedding in San Antonio. We split the costs for gas, giving us extra cash for our stay.
Lodging
I like to use the spring break philosophy on out-of-town wedding trips – pack as many people into a hotel room as you can. During a trip for a former co-worker’s wedding a few years ago in Colorado, we packed six people into a two-bed budget hotel room for two nights straight. Sure, a couple of us had to sleep in the closet or on the floor, but we each paid about $15 a night.
This is an extreme example of savings on lodging, I realize, but sharing the cost of lodging, or better yet staying with friends or family, saves you a ton of money.
Many wedding invitations provide suggested lodging in the vicinity of the ceremony and the reception. It has been my experience that these suggested hotels typically run about $100 to $200 a night with taxes.
Therefore, I usually choose a no-frills budget motel that convenient to the wedding site that costs 50 percent to75 percent less than the suggested hotels. For example, at a wedding in Las Vegas, we stayed at an hotel off the popular Strip for a substantial savings and split the cost among four people.
If you have a wedding or two you planned to attend months in the summer, the main thing you should do is start saving. If you have to travel to a wedding in June, start saving $50 a week in November, and you will have $1,200 in April – ample time to finalize travel plans.
The distance you have to travel for a wedding and how many weddings you plan to attend should determine how much you should save. Basically, write down a budget for your planned expenses and go from there. Otherwise, credit card debt can have you reeling like the aftermath of a raucous wedding reception.
Author bio: Brian Williams, a graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington, has 11 years’ experience writing and editing at daily newspapers in Texas. Learn more Credit Solutions. Credit Solutions is your alternative to debt consolidation.
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