Should You Provide Transportation for Wedding Guests?

Transportation is a very specific topic to your wedding

It's very important, especially for your bridal party if you have a separate venue, if you have a hotel, a church or a temple, and then a venue separate from all that.

If you have three separate locations already, I definitely recommend looking into transportation. The first way I would go looking into transportation is contacting your hotel.

Ask them if in-house transportation or a hotel shuttle  and if you are able to use their transport

Sometimes I've got some great deals from their in-house transportation shuttles. So speak to your hotel to see if they have a shuttle option.

And if they don't, ask them the best areas where it would be possible for the transportation to pick up and drop off people.

In regard to shuttles, some hotels have an overhang next to their entrance and so a lot of shuttles don't fit. And sometimes the guests have to go for little bit of a walk to get to the transportation.

So clarify those terms before you look into transportation and seeing what's the best method for that.

Look into a smaller vehicle if a large bus is not possible.

Find out your terms before looking into transportation and then also making sure that they don't have an in-house shuttle that you can use for a great price if it's not complimentary.

When is it a definite need for transportation?

I highly recommend you need transportation when you have at least three separate areas to go to.

And if you're not going to get transportation for guests, then definitely get it for the bridal party, immediate family and for yourself, you and your fiancé.

It's really important to have transportation for you because if you're late, then everything else is pushed, so it's better to depend on that.

I have had a lot of clients who use Uber or Lyft, and I'm more familiar with Uber and Uber is great because they have a whole system called Uber Events.

I've included a link in our course for it and you can definitely get a transportation card and share it with your family or guests if you'd like to pay for their rides Uber-wise.

If you prefer not to pay for the rides because you don't know how much it would be in total, that's totally understandable. But if you do go that route, just know that Uber sometimes is not the most dependable based on the area you're in.

For example, in a highly populated area, and if it's the weekend and you think it's going to be really crowded, you're going to have to wait for Uber for a while.

Which is why I say it's more important to get solid transportation for bridal party than necessarily your guests, because guests can be five or ten minutes late, whereas the bridal party has to be on time.

Definitely get transportation for bridal party.

If you have three separate areas to go to, I've listed who would probably need transportation. It's usually the bridal party, brighter groom and then guests.

So three separate times of the day that will need transportation. Usually you can do a shuttle, you can do tiered buses, or you can do a limo Rolls Royce option.

Usually most transportation companies either have a one-stop option or a minimum of hours option.

If you needed your transportation only one way, then they'll just charge you for the one way.

But if you need them for like an hour, they're going to charge you minimum of hours.

The majority of the places down here in Florida are three hour minimum. So if we're employing the transportation method, we'd have to at least pay for the three hour minimum.

They sometimes include gratuities and sometimes don't. That's also something to discuss with them, how much gratuities would be also with transportation, if you do employ a transportation company and you do reach out to some vendors nearby, same process as every other vendor, look into reviews, make sure they have AC that works.

Make sure when you're planning out timing, if you're going to have transportation of shuttles and they're going to make a few loop arounds.

For example, let's just say you have 150 guests and they're all out of town guests and you are using 250 person buses, then you would have the timing of the two buses to arrive.

Let's say your ceremony start time is 4pm - and the place is ten minutes away - I'd have the buses arrive around like 3:20 or 3:30pm, give a 15 minutes grace period before they leave and then drop off the guests.

Don't forget, re-tell the transportation time, the invitation start time, not the actual start time.

So if for some reason you have stragglers, you can always have the bus go back because they're working on a minimum of hours - unless you're doing the one-stop option - and going to pick up any of the straggler guests.

In that case, I definitely recommend having the bus go back to the hotels if there's multiple hotels for any last minute straggler guests who didn't catch the bus on time, and adding a 15 minutes grace period, meaning the bus will wait at the hotel.

Ten to 15 minutes is really important because there's always those guests who go last minute.

Oh, I forgot my glasses. Oh, I forgot a change of a pair of flats. I forgot I need to go to the bathroom.

Those types of people will definitely miss the bus if we don't have that grace period, so be sure to accommodate for that.

How do you inform your wedding guests about transportation?

If you do provide transportation for your wedding guests, then definitely add that to your wedding website. 

If you don't know your timing yet for transportation, just let your guests know that you will be providing transportation and when you get closer to the wedding date, you can always add the transportation information to your welcome bags or inform guests at rehearsal dinner.

Talk to your hotel that the transportation will be picking up from. Ask them if they can put up a sign somewhere at the front desk.

But at least let the front desk people know that there's going to be a shuttle for your wedding and that they should be able to indicate to guests where to go.

When to book transportation for your wedding?

I highly recommend you booking your transportation at least six to eight months before your wedding. I know that seems really far in advance, but sometimes your wedding lands on prom season or a season where transportation is usually booked or a higher price range, so it's good to know your numbers earlier on.

I like to always be prepared, so it's good to do that.

And as a wedding planner, I always add an extra team member if I find out there's transportation, because I always want someone on the bus.

So to that effect, if you have a day off, make sure that they have someone on the bus.

And if you don't, make sure to have a family member in charge of the bus, meaning don't allow the bus to leave if the bus isn't full or if you know people are on the way.

Obviously it's not you. And I don't recommend anyone from the bridal party or immediate family because they should be at ceremony already.

I'm talking about a family member that's going to take the shuttle and will inform the bus driver to go.

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