Clearing out venue

johnplussarah

How long after the reception ends does it take for the venue to clear out?  I'm scheduling busses and need to know how much time to allot for people to gather their things and be ready to board.

manateehugger

This completely depends upon your crowd, the number of people you're talking about, when the bar closes, when dinner ends, if there is a DJ who stops playing early, if any announcement is made, etc.

Are you only doing one trip? What about the guests who would like to leave before the end of the party?

johnplussarah

That is the tricky part.  Our contract says that the bus can make 2 trips to drop-off at the hotel.  We had planned on just having them come when the wedding ends and not using the second trip, but i've come to find that we have more people staying at the hotel than we anticipated. 

We wouldn't want 20 guests to have to stay at the venue for 25 mins til the bus returns. I contacted the bus company about a larger that would accomodate all guests staying overnight or second bus.  They could accomodate the latter, but the bus size made the price more than double.

SOOOO, I contacted other bus companies and found a great rate on a no-wait time party bus that could accomodate the bridal party and their dates and would alleviate the space issue.  The thing is, in order to ensure we don't get charged additional for making them wait, I would set the pickup time 20 mins after the end of reception..at that point, 5 more mins of waiting would cost us $300 less.

Ahhh...getting married is so hard.

SBmini

What time does your reception end? If you have a late end time, I would send one bus earlier and communicate that if you don't want to stay until, say, 2 am, that one bus will leave at 11. Then have another bus show up at 2. Typically I've found that music, food/drinks all stop a half hour before the reception is over. This gives people enough time to say their final goodbyes, collect their things, finish their drinks, etc. So if your end time is 2 am, have that second bus come at 2 am. It will be even more incentive for people to get out at the allotted end time. The DJ can announce the bus too to make sure people don't miss it.