In reply to mark hounslea:
I find DIY ski trips are great for destinations where I/we can book budget hotels/gites and for trips which don't start and end on normal change over days. This is how I do my trips to Chamonix.
Catered chalets are more often than not organised by package tour companies and there may be less choice for DIY. Self catered chalets give you more flexibility but won't save much money when shopping in resort, and waste a lot of cooking time.
Catered chalets can be a bit of a gamble on who else you share them with. You may get similar like minded family groups you can enjoy hanging out with, or people you can't get on with; even worse if they have noisy or badly behaved very young children - can be claustrophobic in a small catered chalet.
Larger catered chalets blend into hotels (often called Chalet-hotels) and good ones have many of the benefits, tea and cake after skiing, set meals with complementary wine etc, and more control over who you and your family spend time with.
Transfer from the airport to resort is a factor, Chamonix and Morzine are not too far and pre-booked fixed price mini bus prices are reasonable - but you may end of waiting at the airport for your booking. Car hire is flexible especially somewhere like Chamonix where it can make it easier to get around, but not often cheap and you may have extra hassle./cost parking. A package holiday will have no hassle coach transfer which is a lot easier
My recommendations would be to go for a good chalet hotel package with a reputable company. Mark Warner are very good and have a couple of places in Tignes (we are going there with them in March) which has excellent snow sure skiing and depending on which area of the town you go for the option of good, but not over the top night life. Mark Warner use Jet2 flying from Manchester which is a lot better than the usual package airlines, ie check in times and 22kg baggage allowance .
Let me know if you need anything else
Post edited at 19:02