Weddingbee Blog

Go round and round, all the way to our wedding!

Mr. Cola and I are following in the steps of several bees, and will be renting a charter bus for our wedding guests. Considering the hotel is a half hour away, and our venue is at the top of the Santa Cruz Mountains, up a curvy, carsick-inducing road, I consider it money well spent. No guests of ours will be getting DUIs or in a wreck on account of our wedding!

Here is a peek at a mock-up of the map I made for our invitations inserts, showing the windy roads—we even caution guests again to take advantage of our bus (click the map for a larger view):

But just because we consider it a necessary expense doesn’t mean we didn’t shop around for the best price! However, it proved to be more difficult than anticipated; gathering charter bus quotes was hard work.

I initially contacted companies directly through their online quote systems on their websites, but only one company responded. So I then found a third party company that I submitted my info with, and that site sent out the quotes for me, resulting in a bunch of responses.

For 50-57 passenger charger buses, the ranges we got were from $500 to $1300 for a 6.5 hour rental, most in the $750-$900 range. Since I couldn’t find a website or any info on the company that provided the $500 quote, we instead went with Peninsula Tour, for $775 + driver tip for a 57 passenger bus. Incidentally, they were the company who was the only one to respond to my first round of quote requests, giving them even more points in my book.

Our guests will be able to ride in luxury in this bad boy, and won’t have to worry about taking full advantage of our open bar:

{Source}

Of course we are asking our guests to RSVP for a seat on the bus, since it only holds 57 people. But I’m guessing that those taking advantage of it will mainly be those staying at the hotel, which equals about half of our 100 person guest list. So, it should all work out nicely!

Mr. C and I won’t be on the bus though—we’ll have our own transportation, a regular old limo. I really didn’t want to pay for this expense, but in the end we decided it’s for the best, since neither of us want to drive, and I couldn’t easily get in a regular car without wrinkling my dress anyway. So about 2 1/2 hours before the ceremony, Mr. C and one of our photographers will ride to our first look location from the hotel together, and me and our second photographer will ride in the limo. We’ll then have an hour for our first look and pictures, after which Mr. C and I will take the limo to our ceremony/reception location, being followed by our photogs in their car.

{Source}

At the end of the evening, a half hour before the reception ends, Mr. C and I will sneak out and be taken back to the hotel, giving us enough time to change and set up for the after party. Luckily we were finally able to find a limo company, Limo Bee, who wouldn’t make us pay for the hours of sitting in the parking lot during our ceremony and reception. Most of them wanted to charge $800-900; even more than the charter bus! But with the company we’ve booked, it’s $225 for the first part of the day (3 hour minimum), and then $100 for the transfer back to the hotel at the end of the night. Not bad, right?

And now we at least won’t have to worry so much about squishing my dress into a small car, or, god forbid, something like this:

{Source}

What will you be doing for transportation on your wedding day?