To Shuttle or Not to Shuttle?

Ours is the same way, but we're only providing maybe 1 or 2 15-20 passenger shuttles, one of those is owned by our venue.

We'll only be telling our bridal party, traveling guests that are staying in hotels, and a few close friends about it, because honestly, if you make that news known, then everyone will take advantage of it and you'll have a LONG LONG line waiting for those shuttles lol.

Do people have their own vehicles they can drive? That is the only transportation I have seen at past weddings is driving themselves and carpooling. Many out of the area guests have rentals. I personally would not pay for a shuttle unless there was no parking on site and guests have to park elsewhere.

Transportation is nice but not required. Since your venue is so far and you mentioned a decent number of out of town guests, I would look into it and see if it's something that is financially feasible. However, if it isn't in your budget, I wouldn't sweat it.

So we were in the same debate as you. I just got married on April 17th and our venue was 45 minutes to an hr outside of downtown Charlotte where our guests were staying. I was getting quotes for $1,600 from several companies bc we would of have to rent the bus for the entire time of the wedding (6 hrs). I luckily found another transportation company who would do it for $760 for 6 hrs and it’s wants a fun thing to spend our money on but we also didn’t want people not drinking bc of having to drive. Uber was looking at $80 one way so we Decided to provide a shuttle for our out of town guests and they were very grateful and it also forced them to stay the whole wedding 😂

I think this depends on your crowd. For your our of town guests are they driving or flying? My crowd does transportation a lot, especially if there’s a lot of out of town guests, but many couples have opted to rent school buses instead of traditional transportation.

We are in the same boat but decided to let guests figure our their own transportation. Most of our out of town guests will need to get a rental car to get to where we live and where the wedding venue is from the airport anyways.

We’ve debated this for months. We opted not to for the pure fact that the cheapest I could find was around 1200$ for the night. We decided if we had the extra funds we’d be okay but we definitely have nothing extra right now. Our venue is 15 minutes to the hotels.

I am pro shuttle. If there is alcohol at the reception, it's the only way to ensure everyone is safe. If they have to drive they will probably drink less and not have as much fun worrying about getting home for the night.

Since your venue is in a more remote location and you have no way of knowing if there will be enough Uber/Lyft drivers available, I would definitely book a shuttle since there will be alcohol involved.

View Quoted Comment Most of our out of town guests will be driving. The thing that's really making it hard for me to decide is the fact that the majority of our guests live between 1-2 hours away from our venue and the closest hotel options to the venue are out of their way for the most part. If we were in that scenario for someone else's wedding, we would just drive the hour or two home and not get a hotel.
I don't assume that most of our guests will be getting a hotel room because it seems silly to assume they'll get a place half an hour out of their way that's $160 for a night just to be able to get hammered and then drive home the next day.

View Quoted Comment Did anyone seem offput by the idea of their hotel being so far away? We live just over an hour away from our venue in a tourist friendly city, and I wouldn't be opposed to making hotel plans and a shuttle service here instead, but a part of me feels like it's silly to do that when there are closer options.

View Quoted Comment That's kind of where I'm at now. Once we have a better idea of how many people need hotel rooms then we'll probably have a better idea of how needed they are. The hotel location that is closest to our venue isn't really a central location for the majority of our guests, I just assumed people would rather have a room half an hour from the venue and be out of the way than have one an hour from there and be closer to our home and more centrally located, but that might not be the best thought.

View Quoted Comment Most people will be driving. The guests that would be flying in are in the wedding party and we'll definitely figure out their transportation. The majority of our guests and immediate family are 1-2 hours away from the venue and there is a lot of parking on site.

View Quoted Comment While I totally get what you're saying, doesn't that only truly work if the majority of our guests are staying at the hotel? Most of our guests will probably end up driving an hour back to their homes, which means they're going to worry about it whether we pay for a shuttle or not 🤷‍♀️

View Quoted Comment

In that case, save your money

View Quoted Comment No one said anything about it because it was our wedding lol but we found the venue we love and it happened to be an he outside center city. Because of this we did decide to eventually get the shuttle make it easy for everyone. At the end of the night everyone had a good time and we had coolers full of alcohol for the one he drive up to the venue so they were pregaming!

We’re doing a shuttle and we booked through the school district. So everyone gets to get on a school bus!

My mom and I went to a wedding about two and a half hours from home and I ended up just making sure I stopped drinking about two hours before we wanted to leave. I’m not a huge drinker anyways so I had very little alcohol to drink anyways. But it was fine. If most of your out of town guests are driving, I’d skip the shuttle. For my out of town guests for my first wedding, I didn’t provide a shuttle either. I trusted the adults to just stop drinking with enough time to sober up and drive home safely. The furthest away from my wedding venue for my first wedding was two and a half hours. If your OOT guests are too drunk to make it home, hopefully someone kind can drop them off at the hotel that’s not far away for the night