How far away is your venue?

Our wedding had 130 people invited, 75 of those are my family and love within an hour away my fiancé’s live 1.5 -3 hours away from our venue. We thought more about where we wanted to get ready and the venue more so of distance

I would say that you should go with the venue and location you chose. As others have said, your guests will travel if they really want to celebrate with you. We are in Alberta, and are getting married in Halifax, Nova Scotia. My family are all in the UK so this venue to half way. So, wherever we chose, people would need to travel. Most people are accommodating to the same, and we are using AirB&B's instead of hotels to reduce the cost.

Kathryn

This is a good topic to think over your guests staying nearby hotel or accommodation set near the ceremony/reception venues. Talk to the hotels/accommodations around the area and find out discounted rates available for the room block needed. Its handy to put on the invitation for bookings when the time comes. Our distance from home was about 20 minutes. Our families were about an hour and half to 2 hours heading from the east (Oshawa, Whitby, Pickering side) and west (Mississauga) side. This time is looking at summer time with traffic jam.

I know for a fact when creating the guest list and overseeing where some guests are travelling from distance wise, you want them to feel at home with everyone else attending. I had a lot of family from the states and immediate locally along with friends too. The venue chosen had a cabin that did have rooms for all of my family side and to be together. As for the in laws, wedding party and friends were in the main building around our suite. This allowed time to make for everyone to enjoy activities on land and on water during the day.

Our venue is only about 20 mins away from where we live, majority of my family lives in the city we’re getting married. My fiancé’s family lives in our town and so so many of his friends that will be attending. Because where we live is such a small town we unfortunately don’t have cabs for our guests to take back home, therefor we will be hiring a bus to drive our guests who want it back home that night! We’re doing it because we know we can fit it into our budget and we don’t want our guests to sacrifice having a good time in order to get home safe!
Also we will be hiring transpiration for us and our wedding party to get to the venue morning of, it just makes more sense for us to get ready at home rather than a hotel.

My fiance and I are getting married in a different province then where we live. When we had picked where we were gonna get married, we didn't think of how far people would need to travel. It's our day not anyone else.

Our entire guest list will be traveling to Kelowna for our wedding which is mostly 10 hours away for most of our guests. If our guests that we chose really want to attend our wedding, they will find a way to be there!

Like others said, we chose the venue based on what we liked.


I didn't really factor in how far the venue is. I just figured if people want to be there they will figure it out. Just like if we had booked a destination wedding. I would just look into if accommodation is available for your guests.

If all your guests are in a particular area and you and or fiancee are the ones moving farther away, as in several hours( 3+hours) from where you are now, then I would consider maybe doing it closer to where the majority of guests are.
In my case, Half of the guests are probably 1.5 hours away from the venue. A quarter of guests are 2-4hours away and another quarter are 30mins-1hr away.

To be honest - we picked the venue we liked, we didn’t really give a thought as to how far people would need to travel.


That being said, majority of our guests are within 40 mins of our venue - so it’s not ridiculously far. The ones further out will be booking the hotel we picked out.
The ones who matter won’t miss your day because the venue is too far, in my opinion.

It’s probably going to depend on where your guests would have to stay and who would be willing to travel. How far would it be to travel to southern ON from where you are now? Another thing to consider is wedding prices in southern ON are steep, you’ll probably save by booking at home.
The main question is going to be: where are your guests going to stay. If you have it at home, the guests that will travel more than an hour will probably stay the night, are there places for them to choose from to stay at be it hotel or family? Or if they’re willing to travel, you could have a hotel that’s close by for everyone.
I know for us, We live in NS but our wedding is in ON because that’s where all of our family is. It was much easier to just travel home rather than try to get all of our guests out here and have to quarantine as per provincial rules.

I live in Toronto, the majority of our guests live within the Greater Toronto Area, and we're having our wedding in Richmond Hill. If we're limited to 50 guests as per covid regulations then everyone is in the GTA so it's under an hour for everyone to get to the venue.


Are you currently in Ontario, prior to moving? How about your fiance? If not, I suggest keeping your venue close to your current home. It's a lot easier to move yourself then all your guests. That being said, if people want to come, they'll make the effort to do it regardless of where it's at so if it makes your life easier to have it closer to where you'll be when you study, I say go for it.