googlecheckout has no fees associated until 1/1/2008 - then it's 1.5% transaction fee per transaction. Add on the 1.5% as a convienence fee if you'd like & let your guests know. Paypal's fees are 2.9% + so much per transaction.
Quote: Originally Posted by IrieBride08 Ok, it's my turn to officially have issues! For starters, I'm planning my wedding and travel plans myself. The only coordinator I have is my resort planner (who won't email me back, but that's another issue!).
When I was first engaged, I signed up with destinationweddings.com and it wasn't a good experience. I had two different travel planners who made everything difficult for me--from confusing my wedding plans with other brides to continually giving me incorrect information about various resorts I was trying to research.
Ultimately, I ended up negotiating the contracts and group rates for both the resort and airfare myself and I think I did a great job under the circumstances. The thing I missed most about using DW was the idea of my guests being able to make payments on the wedding trip online, etc. Well, I decided I would do it all myself and added payment capability to my wedding website via Paypal.
Things have gone fairly smothly, except I had the hardest time creating the payment buttons (since I'm not an expert in html code, etc.) but I finally figured it out and got them working. Well, I just realized that Paypal charges a small fee on each transaction that is made. For example, I tested the buttons and paid $1 to make sure everything was working properly. How about a .33 fee left only .67 cents in my account! I knew there would be a fee, but I didn't think it would be that much! That .33 is a BIG dent out my dollar! How much will the fee be on the $969 per couple for the wedding trip?!?!?!
I need all of that money to pay for the wedding trip. I created a wedding account and attached it to Paypal specifically for that purpose. I can't allow my guests to use the buttons and have Paypal take huge chunks out of the payments! FI and I are paying for this ourselves and our budget is small! Now I don't know what to do because my wedding website and the STDs that I sent out last month all say that payments can be made online, and my guests are starting to RSVP and want to begin paying for the trip.
I feel like I've backed myself into a corner with this and don't know what to do. I need another way to allow my guests to pay for the wedding trip. I even considered asking them to mail payments to me (and I could deposit them into the wedding account), but I don't know how tacky that would be. I wish I could afford to just subsidize the difference ourselves, but I'm afraid it will put us far beyond our budget.
At this point, I'm REALLY missing having a travel agent/wedding coordinater to help me sort through this mess, but I don't think I can afford one at this point. I need help ladies!