? Excessive room charge

Due to our family not living local to our wedding we knew that 90% of our guests would stay over. We therefore spoke to a hotel local to our wedding and explained we would likely need around 30 rooms in total -no problem. They said that the rate would be £x. I did my research and checked their own website and saw that the advance purchase rate was cheaper (I think around 10-15% cheaper) than the rate they told us which was the standard flexible one given on the website. She agreed that our guests could book the advance rate also. I queried if we could have a group booking discount but they said no. Ours was a weekday wedding (not friday) also so I was surprised they wouldn't but they said that they are busy with corporate guests on weekdays, which may be the same for the hotel your son is getting married at. The lady I spoke with at the hotel asked if we could get our guests to book direct with them as they pay a premium to websites like booking.com - which was no problem as far as I was concerned as the price was the same as booking.com when I checked. The hotel website even had a pop up every time you went on it proudly saying that the best rates were always direct.

So I was as annoyed as you are feeling when one of the last guests to book their room (still at least 2 months before) said they had booked on booking.com as it was cheaper and fully flexible (unlike the advance rate)!!!!!!!!!!!! i spoke to the hotel and asked if they could honour the same price, as their website said they would always be the cheapest (the rate on their website was still the same as before). She looked into it and said that this was a promotional rate for booking.com and they couldn't match it, even though they make the claim of always being the best price on their website! Luckily I had already reserved some of the rooms on booking.com that I could so I just cancelled the ones that had been booked direct on the non flexible rate. Although I was still majorly peeved that the guests that had booked the advance rate (so had to pay when booking) had not got the cheaper rate, luckily it was only a few pounds and not substantial.

I 100% think you are right to feel ripped off, although I am surprised you did not check their website yourself when you enquired. In fairness to the hotel it may have been £142 when you enquired on their website also. I would cancel the 10 rooms you have booked (if you have, I wasn't sure from your post) and just book them on the website.