To shuttle or not to shuttle?

The problem with this is... would you shuttle them back to the church after the reception? What happens to those who want to leave early? Will the church let them park their cars there all day?

Shuttles are best for transportation to/from hotels. Unless you shuttle people from their hotels to the church, then to the reception - where their cars are - I wouldn't recommend.

We had hotel shuttles and only one couple used them. I did have a question on my rsvp cards and about 12 people said they wanted to take the shuttle and then drove anyway. But we had a much smaller guest list. So they may be more beneficial to you.

We have been to a few weddings where the wedding party/immediate family shuttled to and from the ceremony but the guests drove to the ceremony and reception. I have never heard anyone having issues with this type of arrangement.

Shuttles are always a good idea for guests for convenience when the ceremony and reception are at one place. In this case, however, would you also have the shuttle take the guests back to the church to get their cars after the reception is over? If you do, and if the church is okay with your guests cars being in their parking lot, then I think it's a good idea.

If you do plan on going with a shuttle, I would 100% put something on your RSVP's asking for people to mark if they will be shuttling from the ceremony to the reception. I would also include the shuttle times from the reception back to the church so guests can get their cars, so they know that they will have to wait until the end of the reception to get back to their cars. Also so they know if the shuttle will be running to and from during the entire reception or not.

A shuttle makes sense if it is from hotel to ceremony to reception back to hotel at the end of the night. If it is drive to ceremony shuttle to reception shuttle BACK to ceremony location where everyone then gets to their cars and to their respective hotels, I think it sounds like more trouble than it’s worth. People can sort out carpooling on their own if they want to mingle between ceremony and reception (the last wedding we “drove” to, we piled into a car with my parents and an uncle and several of our family did the same just to have fewer people driving).


We did a shuttle from hotel to wedding (ceremony and reception at same place) and back at the end of the night. I did a back side to my rsvp cards and asked if people would be interested in shuttle service , but I didn’t get concrete numbers [didnt ask for specific commitment]. Instead I just accounted for everyone staying at the hotels to be accommodated with the shuttles (I didn’t want someone to opt in last minute just deciding they didn’t want to drive , and then not be able to accommodate them or someone else!) , so I basically just tallied up everyone staying at the hotels. One note there— everyone who booked through my block was easy to count (hotel gave me a list of those names), but we did have several guests book the hotel outside of our block bc they were able to get a better deal using a different promotion— so watch out for that if counting hotel reservations ! With all of my spreadsheets of guestlist I had a pretty good idea of who was staying where so I caught on when I got the list from the hotel and there were a handful of cousins missing that I was certain were staying there — so I went through the list and counted people who I was pretty confident were staying there even if not on the hotel list (I asked around a bit too to get answers). And rounded up!
I think adding a “shuttle? Yes/no” to the rsvp is a great idea, but I’d also still make sure to have a few extra spaces— not all of my guests answered that question. I think some still debated driving.Come day of, most opted in to the shuttle !! (Which is to say- don’t trust a “no” to definitely remain a “no”)