Is a 45 minute drive from ceremony to reception site unreasonable?

30 minutes or less and I am fine. Longer than that is too much for me, but then I hate to drive.

That's seems like a lot. Are you having the hotels near the reception location then? If you provide transportation for you want to have the reception so far away wouldn't be bad!

I seem to be in the minority, but a 45 minute ride between the ceremony and reception honestly wouldn't faze me. Granted, I'm used to driving about 100 miles/day, so I tend to view time in the car a little differently.

I went to a wedding that had this. Don’t do this. It was a pain in the arse. The problem runs into people deciding to skip ceremony or reception as happened with the one wedding I went to. The bride was pissed but her poor planning wasn’t other people’s problems.

So, I'm actually going to a wedding like this in a few weeks. I'm pretty annoyed about it and its taken me months to decide that I even want to go.. The hotel they blocked is right next to the reception, buuuut we have to drive so far back and forth between everything. Not to mention that it's already 45 minutes from home. Ultimately we begrudgingly decided to go, stay (relatively) sober, and just drive home instead of utilizing the hotel block.

Anyway, you definitely may have more declines because of this - or people who don't even come to the reception at all.

In big cities, everything takes more than 45 minutes.

I wouldn't mind driving 45 minutes from ceremony to reception, but I would want a hotel near the reception. No one should be driving after an evening of drinking at your reception.

@Muriel-i have been to umpteen weddings in big cities and have never had to travel more than 15 minutes between ceremony and reception, with the exception of one wedding and it was not actually in a city rather in the suburbs.

Yeah, we were considering something like that as well and decided against it.

Yes, if you chose that you should provide a shuttle for guests.

I've been to one that was that far away with an additional gap as well but I lived 5 minutes from the reception venue so it wasn't that big of a deal for me - I invited one of my other friends over and we hung out at my house for an hour after the ceremony and then went to the reception.