Venue clean up

That's pretty common for a venue. Ours has guests out by 11 and vendors out by midnight. Our caterer & coordinator are responsible for cleaning up. I would look into a coordinator to see if they can help!

I got quotes from $200 for girls just starting out. We went with a more experienced one but there are affordable ones out there.

I must have gotten so lucky. All day DOC for $700. They cleaned up and delivered everything to me the next day.

I would put out feelers in your local facebook bridal groups and see what you get.

As a guest, I would not help clean up a wedding.

What about family? We also have to clean up our venue ourselves. My coordinator is responsible for organizing things as the night goes on, we're paying her $600 to run the rehearsal, be there at 11am the wedding morning and she won't leave until 11pm. She is in charge of starting to pack away extra cutlery, packing away linens, gifts, etc. on top of a ton of other things. She is in charge of organizing it all before she leaves, then we have to take everything out of the venue. We have the option to clean up the day after but my parents want to do it that night so they don't have to drive back. FH and I will not be staying to clean, but our parents and my grandparents are as well as any bridal party members who want to. But, because our caterers and coordinator is doing a lot of the leg work and the prep work before the event is over, my parents should have it pretty easy.

I was a guest at a wedding where it ended really early and they started to clean ASAP before guests even all left. I ended up getting wrangled into helping clean, which honestly put a bad taste in my mouth. I wouldn't ask guests to help.

Also, since your wedding is about 50 people I'm assuming you won't have a ton of tables, centerpieces to worry about, basically less of everything. I think it should be pretty easy to clean up after this amount of people rather quickly!

I guess its a know your crowd kind of thing, but I'm from a smaller town and there is basically no such thing as a DOC at the venues in town. That being said, as a guest/bridesmaid/family member I have been happy to help clean up whatever at any of the weddings that I have been at. I would definitely ask for help from family before I paid $1,000 for a DOC just to help clean up. But, if that isn't something you want to do then I would ask around in local facebook groups or ask your venue if they have recommendations/what people usually do

Our party ended at midnight and we had to be out by 1. In all honesty, since all hired vendors took care of their own items and the venue owned all of the tables, chairs, etc. it wasn't that bad! We packed up gifts, extra desserts, decorations we brought, and we were all out long before the 1:00 deadline. I suppose if you rented tables, rented chairs, etc. you may consider hiring some help, but if you don't have THAT much stuff, I wouldn't even worry spending the extra money on someone simply for that reason

Hi Kate! You received some awesome insight here! Venues and coordinators can definitely vary. If you're looking for a day-of coordinator to take care of clean-up completely, looking into local FaceBook groups is a a great idea from JustKidding.

Otherwise, being that your wedding is around 50 people and more intimidate, perhaps you can rally a group of family and/or bridal party members ahead of time to help pack things up at the end of the night? Gifts, table items, leftover food, and decor shouldn't be too much at the end of the night, like Melissa mentioned.

I am glad you are feeling much better about this! Are you leaning more towards doing it yourselves or hiring someone?

This is EXACTLY my situation. We're getting married this Saturday!! Yay!!

Its also entirely up to us, and we have to be DONE by 9pm, or we pay for another hour.

I hate it, but my mom has graciously agreed to spearhead this task. She, along with my groomsmen, father and father in law are going to attempt it. It sucks, really. I want to do it myself, but no one will let me help.

We're having about 80 people there, and we think most will leave somewhat early. So my mom is planning on starting a little before our grand exit and then pretty much just throwing everything in the car haha. It'll be fine