Rooms and pickups for out-of-town and NRI guests

When guests travel to your wedding, you are not just inviting them. You are hosting them: a room, a ride from the airport or station, and someone to call when the flight is late. For families flying in from abroad, add long journeys, jet lag, elders and a lot of luggage. Here is how to plan it without a war room.

1. Find out early who needs a room

Before you talk to any hotel, count the families who need somewhere to stay, and for which nights. Ask on the invitation, and ask for arrival details at the same time: the day, roughly when, how they are coming, and the flight or train number if they have it. A family arriving two days early for the mehendi needs different nights from one coming for the wedding day only.

2. Hold rooms, and read the small print

For a large group, ask the hotel to hold a block of rooms. Before you agree, ask:

• How many rooms are held, at what rate, and for which nights?
• When do unbooked rooms go back on sale?
• What are the check-in and check-out times, and can late-night arrivals check in straight away?
• Who pays for what: your family, or each guest?

Get the answers in writing. Many international flights land late at night or in the early morning, so an early check-in can matter more than the room type.

3. Place families with care

Keep each family together, and put elders where the walk is short. Mix the two sides only where families are comfortable with it. Make one person the owner of the room plan, so there is a single answer when Mama ji asks which room is his. If the hotel is far from the venue, plan the transfers for every function, not only the airport runs.

When the plan is ready, send the hotel a rooming list: room, guests, check-in, check-out and a contact number. Send a final version close to arrival, and say clearly which version is final.

4. Guests from abroad: the extra steps

Guests travelling on a foreign passport need permission to enter India. An OCI card works as a lifelong, multiple-entry visa, as long as the guest travels on the passport registered with it. Otherwise, many nationalities can apply for an e-Visa on the government's own site, indianvisaonline.gov.in, at least four days before arrival. Encourage guests to apply well ahead, and only on the official site: look-alike sites charge extra. Rules change, so point guests to the official pages rather than repeating details from memory.

Mind the time difference. A reminder sent at nine in the morning in Ahmedabad arrives late at night in New York, so send messages when your guests are awake.

Give every travelling family one local contact who will answer the phone on arrival day. A group chat is not a contact.

There is no need to collect passport numbers or copies of IDs in your wedding plan. Leave those between each guest and their hotel.

5. Plan pickups day by day

Write down every arrival, day by day: who, when, which airport or station, and who is collecting them. Give each driver or cousin only the pickups they are doing, with the flight or train number, so they can check for delays before they leave. Keep track of who has arrived, so nobody waits at arrivals for a family that is already at the hotel.

Do the same for departures after the reception. Airport runs on the last morning often clash with check-out time, so plan them with the hotel's times in hand.

6. Make arrival day easy

• The day before, send each family a short message: who will meet them, the hotel's name and address, and the time of the next function.
• If an elder needs wheelchair help at the airport, they can ask their airline about it when they book.
• Families from abroad often travel with big suitcases. Send a car that fits the luggage as well as the people.
• Keep one family member at the hotel on the first evening, with the room plan in hand, to welcome late arrivals.

7. If almost everyone travels, call it a destination wedding

When most guests are travelling, the stay becomes part of the wedding itself. Give it its own line in the budget, and start the room plan as early as you book the venue.

How Krama Events does this

The RSVP page asks each family for optional travel details: the day, roughly when, how they are coming, and the flight or train number. Those details go straight into Arrivals & departures, so nobody retypes them.

Mark Needs a room on a family and they join the waiting list. Add each stay and its rooms, including numbered runs like 101 to 124, then assign families with their check-in and check-out dates. Krama warns you when a room is over capacity or a guest already has a room on those nights, and you decide whether to go ahead. The rooming list prints or downloads as a CSV file for the hotel.

Arrivals & departures lists travel by day, with the person doing each pickup. A helper sees only the pickups given to them and can mark a guest as arrived. The Destination wedding switch adds a travel and stay checklist and a "Travel and stay" line to your budget. And because Krama never sends messages by itself, you choose the moment every message goes out.

When you're ready, start planning: add your first stay and see who still needs a room.