Hotel Transportation

We are planning on having one!

My FBIL and his wife had them more their wedding, and it was great! Our venue and theirs are about 8 miles apart, plus we're blocking rooms off at the same hotel as they had, so that's why we're having them! The hotel is around 20-25 min. away from our venue.

They used a car rental service and only told certain people about the shuttles. Basically the wedding party and close friends/family that were staying at the hotel knew about the shuttles. Since they did it this way, they were able to estimate the size of shuttle and how many to rent.

I believe they rented 2 vans with 20 seats?

I want to do this for my wedding too! It's about a 15min drive from the hotel to the venue. I know some of my guests will prefer to drive and others are not staying at the hotel. I have an aunt that will be late and my grandparents will want to be early, so I figure I will contract a van or mini-bus service that will make trips for an hour. I'm hoping it will smooth out on its own between those who want to get there early and those who take a bit longer, but if someone misses the shuttle and has to uber there that's beyond my ability to control. I'll try to encourage people to take earlier shuttles than wait for the last one I guess. The way I see it, I'm offering this as a service that's above and beyond accommodating for my guests. Similar to the hotel block, the guests will either use it or not, but I can't stress over it. I'm having a destination wedding with about 100 guests, so a mini-bus for 20 that makes 4-5 trips I think will be good enough, minus the guests who decide to drive themselves and the wedding party who'll get there early for pictures.

Bigger is always better in this case. I've been to weddings before where the shuttle that the couple booked was too small and a few people got left behind and had to take Ubers on their own. It was incredibly awkward and frustrating. Having more space would be a big plus with Covid anyway, assuming that this number of guests will be allowed by then...

At my friend's wedding they rented a school bus which was perfectly adequate for the short ride. For my Brother's wedding there was a tour bus, far too big, but comfortable for a long ride.

We got a list of people staying under our hotel block from the hotel about a month before our wedding (that was the hotel block cut off date). We used that as a guideline to determine the number of guests using our shuttles. We also included it in our online RSVP where people were able to let us know if they needed transportation either to the venue, from the venue or both ways. There was also an option to select that the guest was finding their own way to and from the venue.


This helped out tons for us. We had about 125 out of 170ish guests staying at our hotel. Most opted to use our transportation. We got two school buses that fit 55 people each and a small shuttle that fit 35 people (for the wedding party and their significant others).
It fit everyone perfectly. The ride was like 30-40 minutes each way. We had drinks provided as well.

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This is my big fear! I'm going to include a question with my RSVP about if they plan to use the shuttle service so hopefully that will help me get a better gauge of how big/how many I need.

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I've been to a few weddings that offered it and loved not needing to worry about driving or transporting myself to the venue. Plus depending on the crowd on the shuttle, it can make the ride more fun!

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I know not everyone can afford it in the their budget but I love the thought behind offering it! I'm definitely planning on prominently displaying the shuttle pick-up times so that no one has any excuse to miss it - and if they do, like you say that's on them.

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My one friend did a school bus! That's definitely an option I'm going to price out since it is a fun idea.

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This is good advice! I will definitely check in with the hotel closer to the cut-off date to see what numbers we're looking at. My biggest worry right now is waiting too long and not being able to find a company that's available! But I've heard from other brides who got married at my venue that most of the company's will work with you to determine how many shuttles and how large of a shuttle.

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Yes it was nice having one there! It's perfect for transporting family that are staying in the hotel as well as the wedding party!

View Quoted Comment We got married during “off season” so maybe that’s why we got away with booking it so late, but we didn’t book transportation until 2 weeks before the wedding. Haha

We are looking to do this also. Its about 15 minute ride between the hotel and the wedding venue for us. We have a block of rooms set aside for those that want to stay and like someone else said, I will connect with the hotel to see who is staying and get a count from there. To get to my wedding venue the roads are really tricky and after a night of drinking we'd like to offer safe transportation. I have however, before we fully commit to the transportation been telling everyone (and its on our website) that please utilize Uber as its not that far.