Cocktail hour idea.

The venue sounds awesome but it is your responsibility as hosts to provide refreshments (full dinner, beverages, appetizers, dessert, etc) to your guests on your dime. If you can't afford that then you need to scale back on something to make it possible. Whether that means cutting out unnecessary extras or the guest list.

Will the restaurants charge if you don't have the tokens?

View Quoted Comment We will still have a full dinner with open bar. We will also have appetizers available during cocktail hour. This is just for guest who do not just want to stand around for an hour while we take pictures. This would give them an opportunity to see the town and try some of the food. We will of course be paying for the tokens as well. Sorry I guess I wasn't clear.

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As long as you are covering expenses, this would be a fun activity.

Definitely make sure you mention by word of mouth only or on your website that walking will be a thing at your venue. So guests prepare for dusty dirty (possibly) areas to travel in

I think this would be super fun and creative! It does sound like a lot of potential work though, so it’s definitely your call on what you guys feel like doing to prepare

My concern with this would be that people would be gone longer than an hour and potentially miss some/all of the dinner and reception formalities.

View Quoted Comment I agree with this very much so. It’s a super cool idea, but you will definitely have those people that may lose track of time… an hour goes by very quickly, especially when you are exploring and grabbing drinks. Would you be OK with them showing up a bit late?

I love this idea! As a guest, I would be excited. But I agree with others that you’ll need to be a bit more flexible with time.

This sounds super cool! But I definitely agree that it’s easy to lose track of time. I also would worry about guests that would want to participate but couldn’t for health reasons so they might feel left out?

I saw the same video a few weeks ago and thought the logistics may be hard to pull off. Maybe this will serve better as a pre-wedding event.

View Quoted Comment This exactly. I’d worry a lot about timeline. It is difficult to corral guests even from one room of a venue to another on schedule , so my concern would be your party getting delayed as people make their way back, having either lost track of time or underestimated how long it would take them to get back, or even just be waiting on an app to come out of the kitchen depending on speed and busyness of where they ended up. You’ll not want to start your formalities with people straggling in, so I’d expect it to push your whole timeline back and eat into your party time. It’s a really intriguing idea, I’d just worry about it taking away from your actual wedding

The idea is super duper cute!! 😍

But, as a guest, these are my thoughts:

I am a lazy lazy person. So if I was told that it's not mandatory to go and explore, and that there are still food at the venue, I'd 100% stay at the venue 😂 I also hate being late. So if it was only one hour, I would be too scared that I'll be late getting back to the reception, so I'll just opt to stay.
I think if this were to work, you would have to have some sort of transportation that will gather people up that are willing to go and then drop them off and pick them up again so no one is late. And give them more than 1 hour. Even if the town is teeny tiny, I think 1 hour might be too tight, with people wanting to take pictures, looking in stores, eating and bathroom breaks and travelling back to the venue.
Tokens for about 40-50 people sounds expensive, and it would be wasted if you have already paid for them and people chose not to go!
If you wanted your guests to see the town a little more because it's special for both you and your partner, maybe you can suggest like a wedding weekend? And you guys can be a tour guide and show them the special parts of town you both love!