I am using a travel agent to book all of our travel. I had to pay a deposit on ten rooms at the hotel to lock in our group rate. We have 90 days to pay our full payment (end of March) even though our wedding isn't until October. It is cheaper to book through expedia or Travelocity but then your guests are all flying separately and arriving on different days or at different times. It was important to me that we all fly together on the same plane and that we had direct flights. If you don't care about traveling with your group, or have connecting flights, then I would definitely just let everyone book separately via the internet. It's definitely cheaper. I also want my guests to be situated together in the hotel and can only do that with a group booking. For the $200 or so in savings by using Travelocity, I'd rather pay more since I like being able to tell my guests to contact the travel agent directly instead of bombarding me with questions. Takes the pressure off of me.