Wedding Guest Transportation

4 Written by natasha on December 14, 2008 – 12:00 am

You picked a reception site and you picked out a few hotels that you’re recommending your guests stay at. (Hopefully you’ve also blocked off rooms so that your guests can book their rooms more easily too!) If the hotels and the reception site are not near each other, I strongly recommend that you do *something* about transportation for your guests.

Why? Because the reality is that people drink at receptions. And you do not NOT not want your guests to drink and drive!  One friend told me that he figured either his friends would drink and drive OR they wouldn’t enjoy themselves as much because they were acting as designated driver. Either way – those are two reasons to deal with transportation.

You can pretty much do anything from hiring a shuttle bus to providing taxi cab phone numbers. Obviously that depends on your budget!

As a guest in an unfamiliar city, it was particularly nice to have a shuttle pick us up at the hotel, take us to the wedding (and reception – which was at the same place), and then home again.  It was nice because I didn’t have to worry about directions and I didn’t need to pay for cab fare in both directions.

Photo from http://www.pacificharbour.co.nz/images/hotel/bus.jpg

Note: Sometimes the hotel provides shuttle services — which could range from being free to a fixed price (rather than per guest). 

Another friend couldn’t afford to provide that service and also felt that there were more people from the area than out of town. In that case, a cab that we paid for ourselves was a better option.  The hotel usually has preferred cab companies, but it also is nice if that phone number is given to guests before the day.

A green option is to make sure that the wedding site, reception site, and hotels are so close together that transportation is not needed. Perhaps they would all be the same place!

One site makes a recommendation if a guest gets too inebriated to drive and there are no transportation options: if the reception is at a hotel or near a hotel that is NOT the location where most people are staying, try to get a hotel room there.  Yes, it might not be cheap, but it is definitely safer.

I’m sure there are other options (tell us!). Just be sure to think about the reality of drinking and driving. They don’t mix.

~ Natasha