Hi There - I've just run into the biggest hurdle I've experienced so far in planning. Our wedding is about 2 hours away from where most of our guests live, so 90% of them will be staying at a hotel. We're working on getting room blocks at 2, which are about 10-15 minutes away from the venue. Because it's a small town (there's only 1 Uber driver haha), we have to arrange for transportation for our guests (definitely not into drinking and driving). I originally thought we could just have transportation from the venue to the hotel, but realized that if everyone's cars are at the venue, how are we gonna get them the next morning if there's only one uber driver?!
So we're arranging for shuttle to and from - but here's my issue: I want the ceremony to start at 3:30, but it turns out that hotel checkin isn't until 3, and there's no flexibility. I want people to be able to checkin and get settled before coming to the wedding, but they wouldn't be able to do that if I have shuttles departing at 3. I REALLY don't want to push my ceremony time back even more (I originally had it at 2pm), but I just don't know what else to do. Even pushing to 4pm would be cutting it close, so then I'd have to push it back to 4:30, which I don't want to do if I can avoid it...
Any creative ideas? If I don't arrange for transportation to the venue, does that give people more flexibility on timing? Should I just give them options on how to get their car the next morning, maybe expect people to carpool to the ceremony together to leave one car at hotel and one overnight at venue?
Also, do you think guests NEED to check in to their hotel ahead of time? Should I keep my timeline as is and let people figure it out, or should I cave and push it back?
