Are your OOT guests expecting for you to pay for their room? In what case do YOU foot the bill for the hotel? How did you discuss the topic or bring it up?
In my case none of my OOT guests expect us to pay for their room... none of them have asked, and if they did we would tell them that we do not have the financial ability to do so. Plus I really do not think it is proper wedding ettiquite to pay for the guest hotel room. More than half of our guests are OOT also, and if we had to pay for that many hotel rooms, we'd have to cut back on a lot of wedding details!
We told FIL's that they 'should' pick up the tab for any of their immediate family who are coming in. There is only one brother and their oldest son who are considerably OOT. My parent's immediate family are luckily all close by so that pretty well lets them off the hook. I will pay for my only OOT BM b/c I feel that's only right since she is in the bridal party. Other friends and guests are on their own, we booked a block so they can take advantage of the special rate or just go home.
It never came up, but I seriously doubt my OOT guests expect us to pay for accomodations... Usually, you send a card in the invite saying that rooms have been booked.
We are planning to get a bus since we live in Brooklyn and RH is in LI, however we didn't block any rooms without knowing the number people. Everyone kept changing their minds with things coming up back and forth. I made the response date much earlier to have a better picture of how many people, but it has come up about whether or not we are going to be paying for OOT rooms and I don't know what the polite response would be. I mentioned on our site that we will be blocking rooms eventually but that was the extent of it.
No I do not believe that any of our OOT guests expect for us to pay. We did block rooms for the day at a discounted rate (although it still seemed high to me- I guess a weekend in August on LI is just high) so hopefully that will help. I have been to a number of OOT weddings and never expected the bride and groom to pay. I hope that my guests don't b/c truthfully we just don't have the money at this point and would have to say sorry no can do.
