How far for reception!

Is it necessary to provide transport for guests?

If it's not both ways then it's next to useless anyway - and of course you can't guarantee people will all want to leave at the same time unless you have a fleet of taxis on standby.

It's a nice idea if your budget has the capacity but personally I'd leave it to guests to sort their transport out - if they're driving, then they either have to not drink, or stay over. It's all part of the expectations of going to a wedding and I really don't consider it a necessary expense for the bride and groom on top of everything else you are paying out to feed, water and entertain them for the day.

We purposely picked the same venue for all day, although I have heard of people having ceremony and reception 20 miles apart.

Everything for our wedding is within a ten minute drive of each other.

We searched for a reception venue that was no more than 10 minutes drive from the Church. Ours was 4 miles away.

As for providing transport, this is a lovely idea but I would make sure people know first.

I went to a wedding where they hired a london bus to take people from the church to the reception venue, however they hadn't told anyone and the bus was mostly empty as everyone had driven to the church.

Another wedding I am going to, they have told us transport is already provided, we are all meeting at the house, travelling to the ceremony and then back to the house.

I want to have the reception in the same venue as we have guests coming from overseas and I very much doubt they'll want to be stuck in traffic after a 24hr flight. It's worth considering the time of day and traffic issues too, a ten minute journey can easily become half an hour in rush hour ?

I was wondering along similar lines. was thinkg church ceremony at church in village where i grew up then having reception at hotel near the airport about 18 miles away.

common sense then prevailed. this airport doesnt fly to my 2 honeymoon destinations; florida or fuerteventura, and its also in the middle of nowhere and some people would get lost in an instant.

the 2 places we re now looking at are very close to the church, with one guests could pak at the hotel and walk to church the other is about 10 minutes away.

i also thought about transport to the church from the original hotel but it was going to add £600 to our bill and the way i swa it was that an extra 15 peeople able to come to day and evening

?

We're quite used to it where we live as, although there are plenty of churches and chapels in our town, there's a distinct lack of nice venues, so we have to travel quite a bit to find somewhere decent.

Sometimes they don't provide transport, so we usually drive there and arrange for a minibus taxi to pick up a load of us, or ask a friend to drive a minibus to pick us up. On one occasion, the B&G arranged a bus, which we had to pay for. That was fine, as it was cheaper than a taxi. It left the venue at 1am, so if people wanted to go earlier, they had to make their own way.

I would ensure to give people accommodation options at the venue, so that they can drive to the church, then between teh church and the venue, and stay over at the venue.

Thanks

thing is a few venues I have looked ta havent got accomodation and are around20-25 miles away from the church

AJ: I would be putting a bus back on after last orders so they have got transport both there and back if they didnt want to stay close by to twhere I want my wedding, apart from going into Manchester I havent got a lot of choice you see.

and I definately want a church wedding

Where is your church Bridetobe2013?

i live in middleton

Jaijai my church is in failsworth! Where you getting married?

Enterflora, its just difficult because I want a nice venue, I was even contemplating having the whole day there, but my partner wants a church wedding x

We are having a church wedding and reception in a venue which is about a 20-25 minute drive away. The venue doesn't have rooms but we have block booked a load of rooms in a hotel 5 minutes away. Not ideal but we loved the venue and the choice of church was very important to us and there were no venues nearby.

To make it easier for guests we are putting on a bus from the hotel to church and back to the venue. Then we are just going to get a local taxi company to send a few big taxis to ferry people to the hotel at the end of the night. We have asked anyone that thinks they may want to leave before the end to book themselves taxi's and provided details.

I think people appreciate that we have made the effort to look after them. I've attended a wedding that had exactly this set up and it worked absolutely fine. We hall see how it goes on the day!!!!

I've been worrying about this today actually. My church is 13 miles away from the venue, which does have accommodation.

This sounds really random, but nearly all of our guests will be travelling a long way to get to our wedding, and the venue is just less than 40 miles from where we live. I'm trying to downsize our wedding at the mo, but am wondering if we should provide transport from the venue to the church and back

Been to a couple of weddings where the reception has been away from the ceremony (most of my friends have had church weddings). Works absolutely fine providing there is adequate parking at both locations or you sort transport if there's not.

One wedding had the ceremony at a village on the coast and then a reception in central Newcastle - the transport was central station to village then back (with B&G on board) to the reception venue - everyone found their own way home which worked perfectly.

The other one was in Milton Keynes and the drive was a little longer than planned as a major road was closed (roadworks rather than a crash) so 15-20 minutes drive and probably 8-10 miles.

We serious looked into doing 2 centres, up to about 25 miles apart but in the end decided to spend 18 months going regularly to the church of our choice which is next to the venue we eventually chose because we wanted to go to the church we were getting married in pretty regularly and we preferred the services at the larger church further away- I don't think it helped that our parish had had no vicar for about 6 months!

The major considerations with travelling are parking, convenient accommodation, timings and how many guests who don't have cars.

Our major issue with our parish was the parking CHAOS that is a normal Saturday - the council keep removing "legal" parking spaces, but it isn't often enforced on Saturdays, so people just park illegally. A coach would probably have got stuck and our guests would have added to the chaos. Also a distinct lack of accommodation - one B&B with 2 or 3 rooms, we couldn't even have accommodated the parents nearby! Other weddings I've been to have been a bit stressful to park at, so it's a lot easier when there's a sensible amount of parking closish to the church. Parking where we're getting married isn't fantastic, but it's walking distance from most of the hotels in town, meaning that people can hopefully park up before they come to the wedding if they're not staying the night before. The Newcastle wedding above pretty well had to have transport as there was limited parking at the church and city centre parking is a nightmare plus the gap between ceremony and reception would have had to be huge to allow people to park cars for less than the exobitant costs required by city centre NCPs...

Accommodation: Life is a lot easier if there is enough accommodation in easy reach of the reception venue - our dream venue would have been a pain as there wasn't enough onsite accomodation for all the guests and being properly in the middle of nowhere, there wasn't even an obvious "centre" for accomodation to organise transport back to. Transport provided needs an obvious start and end point - another wedding I went to where the whole thing was in one out of town place picked up and returned to central Edinburgh allowing people to make their own way to hotels after that.

Timings: Providing transport puts your guests in a nice easy to manage package - might be crucial if you've got tight timings between the ceremony and the breakfast or there's some you suspect might get distracted by a pub on route. Potential disadvantage is if something happens to the transport the day is held up - one wedding I went to one of the coaches had a minor crash, so the bride had to sit in the carriage for a while as at least 70% of guests were affected. Also could be handy if you've got time to kill - e.g. B&G take detour with photographer to pretty location en route - coach takes scenic route and is slower, leaving less of a gap between canapes running out and wedding breakfast.

Who your guests are - if most have cars, people are usually more than happy to sort themselves providing there is somewhere to put the car at either end and would be quite happy to give lifts to those without. If the proportions or politics are such that there wouldn't be enough seats in cars for guests, it would be considerate to limit the potential taxi fare of provide transport - and I can see no problem with asking for token contributions to a bus if the cost to the guests would be less than a taxi.

There were a few venues 20-25 miles away!

I just want to say thanks for all your help and points that you made, becasue there are things yu forget to think about when doing all this planning.my fav venue is 9 miles away but dont know i my budget will stretch!

then there is pretty much nothing else apart from manchester center xxx

I am actually getting married at a church in altrincham and having my reception at styal Lodge. its about a 20 minute drive though!

Ohhh Style Lodge looks gorgeous!! Love this venue style!

I am thinking about a venue thats 10 miles away this is the nicest and nearest xx

What venue is it?

i am really pleased with Styal, was exactly what we were looking for, i cant wait now!