End of the night question

We hired a coordinator for this reason. It’s not our family’s job to clean up after our party and we surely didn’t want to do it.

Yes, we have to do this at our venue. I think it's pretty common, unless you have use of the venue for the whole weekend, and tear down could be done the next day.

For us, we already have family and friends who have volunteered to stay and take down all the decor, so that we can leave for our hotel at the end of the reception. We aren't having a ton of decor, thankfully, so it won't take long.

I’ve never heard of a venue that would let you leave everything unless you rented the space for multiple days. We had a wedding planner handle all of that.

Our family will be staying to take down all decorations, it is very normal on both sides for family to do this. FH and I will be doing a grand exit and leaving for the hotel

Our venue will pack up all our decor but we’re responsible for getting to our cars. I have a bridesmaid who offered to help (and will
also be driving my car back to the hotel) and an aunt. At the end of the day we don’t have that much stuff, but I agree it’s still a bit of a pain.

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I don't know why this issue didn't occur to me until now. Did you hire the coordinator just for the day? I'm not loving the mental image of me schlepping things around in my dress at 12 am after a 5 hour open bar.

View Quoted Comment Yes, a day of coordinator.

All the weddings I attended I stayed after and helped pack everything up.

Ours does, but we are paying our florist & coordinator & caterer to take it all.

At our venue as well everything we bring in must be taken out by the end of the night.. so we made it easy on us. Everything that we bringing in will be taken out by a company named L &L rentals from table cloths to arch etc
everything else like plates forks cups all will go into the trash. We will leave with all our guests..

Yes our venue is the same way. Unfortunately the coordinators we’ve spoke with aren’t “required” to help. We want a grand exit to kick off the wedding day, so we’re thinking of how to do this..

Thankfully, we have gracious family members that have been volunteering without being asked because it’s a frequent thing to do..

Venue coordinator (day of only) helped us pack up all the decorations into our cars that we left over night. Coordinator got an extra key that she then locked inside the car. If you plan on saving any floral arrangements though depending on the temperature, they might not do the best. Our guests took home most of the floral arrangements, the ones left over my parents took. and the larger items (floor length mirror & circle arch)

We have one hour after the end of our reception to get all of our items cleaned up and out. I specifically added on the clean up service to my coordinator's day to make sure that no one in our families had to worry about this. I'd definitely look into getting a Day of Coordinator to help out so you don't have to worry about anything!

We're going to leave at our send-off, but my parents and FH's parents are planning on taking everything down and recruiting other people to help. My parents and my siblings' in-laws have taken down all the decorations after both of my brothers' weddings. If your parents don't mind, there's nothing wrong with getting them to do it. My parents and FH's parents kind of see it as one of their duties for the wedding (although, we didn't ask them to do it).

Our venue has not mentioned anything like this to us. We will be providing them with signs, place cards and additions to the centerpieces. Never once did they say we would have to set them up or clean up after. I believe with our venue, they will pack them up and we can pick them up the next day. I’ve also never been to a wedding where decor was taken down by the bride and groom or bridal party.

I stayed til the end and left everything behind because it was cheap but the next day they called us to grab stuff we left

Woops forgot to mention when I stayed I did technically take someeeee things but definitely not all

We are doing a exit and taking off. We have family members dedicated to taking stuff down. Our venue provides most things so theres not much we need to worry about just left overs on food and then flowers. We planned on doing it but after speaking with our families they wanted to take care of it for us so we could just be married.

We have to tear down but this is common and my family is very used to "okay people it's 11pm pick up the nearest table decoration and take it out to Martha's car, see you at the after party in an hour. Love you bye" The bride usually just walks around pointing at things that the random cousins need to pick up. We're hiring a bartender and she'll pick up all food and drink related items that have to go home with us.

We are responsible to take down anything that we brought in. So we need to tear down any left over centerpieces or favors and we need to take home any decorations (guestbook, card box, signs, frames, etc) that we brought in with us when the night is over before we head home. Anything else such as tables, linens, etc is the responsibility of the caterer and venue.

Our wedding ends at 1030 so I'm expecting to be there cleaning up until 1130 so we will not be getting back home until around midnight or little after.