Said It Here

Ceremony and reception at different venues

Having a ceremony and reception at separate venues creates anxiety that guests who RSVP'd won't actually make the drive between locations, which ruins headcount numbers and wastes money on food and drink. This fear often forces couples to choose a less-than-ideal venue simply because it is closer to the ceremony site.

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

  1. 1
    Keeping the drive between locations reasonable in length
  2. 2
    Limiting the time gap between the ceremony and reception
  3. 3
    Asking people to RSVP to both events separately
  4. 4
    Hiring shuttles to transport guests between locations
  5. 5
    Getting shuttles from the church to the venue

In their words

Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.

“One concern I have is that once the wedding is over, people deciding to not drive to the ​reception even though they may have rsvp'd. I think that is highly likely and would skew our numbers for food and drink.”source ↗

Careful_Cricket_559 · r/weddingplanning · 2 upvotes

“There’s a venue that we LOVE and it is about a 25-30 minute drive from our church. I was hoping to find a venue about a 10 minute drive from our church, but this one is just amazing.”source ↗

Designer-Command8015 · r/weddingplanning · 2 upvotes

Where this came up

r/weddingplanningevent logisticslogisticsvenue selectionwedding planning

People with this problem also raised