'Wedding shuttle driver kidnapped our guests,' 'I FEEL TERRIBLE.'

"Wedding shuttle driver kidnapped our wedding guests..."

I want to preface this by saying my wedding was awesome and everything else went really well, which really highlights how terrible this vendor was. For context, our wedding was in a state park in a stone pavilion. The challenge with this location was that the pavilion had very little parking, so we decided to have a shuttle service.

The other complication was the road to the pavilion goes through a one-lane, 10' tall tunnel. My in-laws offered to coordinate and pay for this vendor, so I wasn't involved in most of the communications but I did make sure the shuttle company knew about the tunnel and confirmed they had a shuttle that would fit.

The plan was for the shuttle to pick people up at the hotel, pick a few more people up at a larger parking lot in the state park at the bottom of the hill, and then take everyone through the tunnel and up the hill to the pavilion.

Fast-forward to our wedding day: my partner and I spent what felt like hours getting photos taken, and then we looked at my phone and realized it had been hours -- where were our guests? Our day-of coordinator let us know that our shuttle driver had gotten lost but was now on his way.

But he didn't just get lost. After our ceremony, which started an hour late from waiting for all of our guests, we learned that the shuttle picked people up at the hotel and state park parking lot and then DROVE EVERYONE OUT OF THE PARK and into ANOTHER COUNTY.

Luckily, I had sent everyone maps ahead of time, so everyone told him to turn around, but he didn't until one of our wedding guests went up to the driver and very firmly told the driver he had to go back and directed him.

An uncle took a video of part of this fiasco, and it's one of my favorite wedding "gifts." (And yes, someone else got out of the shuttle to help the driver get through the tunnel because he tried to drive into it at an angle).

After the reception, the shuttle was supposed to come back to take wedding guests back to their cars or to the hotel. But the shuttle was late, and our poor coordinator was trying to figure out what was going on this time.

It turns out that the shuttle company sent a different driver with a different shuttle, and this shuttle was a HUGE BUS that obviously wouldn't fit through the tunnel, so the driver just parked in the big parking lot.

At that point, a few of our guests decided to walk down the hill, but most of the guests were ferried to the parking lot/shuttle by our parents, who drove up and down the hill about ten times to get everyone down to the parking lot.

This vendor was sooo incompetent, and I feel terrible for our guests, but it's also pretty funny. Anyone else have a transportation vendor who brought people to the wrong place?

EDIT:

Wow, I didn't know my title would be so controversial lol. I called it that because that's what the guests on the shuttle jokingly referred to it as. The driver left the state park and drove them 40 minutes away (on the highway!) instead of staying in the park and driving for 3 minutes up a hill.

Several guests told him he wasn't going the right way, but he insisted that he knew the area and knew where he was going and ignored the wedding coordinator's calls (she ended up calling guests we knew were on the bus to find out what was happening). It wasn't until my friend was very firm with him that he begrudgingly agreed to turn around.

Here's what people had to say to OP:

metaljane666 said:

At my best friends wedding, the shuttle driver picked up the grooms parents and some other guests and took them to a different, wrong venue nearby. The grooms parents had never seen the venue so didn’t know they were in the wrong place.

They all went straight into someone else’s wedding, which was soon to start, before they noticed the guests that were there were not on theme, as my friend’s wedding was in costume lol.

A bunch of guests signed the wrong wedding guest book too! Lmao. The driver was informed and got everyone to the correct venue, late. Wedding had to be held up because it was the freaking grooms parents on that shuttle!

potsieharris said:

I recently went to a wedding in New Orleans where they shuttled us to the French quarter after. Three to a seat on this bus and no AC. The condensation was dripping down the walls and windows...It took forever to go what our local friend said should be 10 minutes. At last I saw the hotel we were aiming for...Only to watch as we drove past it and away...

It turned out the driver was new and lost and we spent 45 minutes driving around in this sweatbox while she tried to figure out how to get the other way onto a one way street. And then like 2 minutes before we disembarked she goes "Oh, y'all hot?!" and turns on the air...Blasting us all with cool comfort that we could have had all along...Misery.

cupcakes0220 said:

When I coordinated weddings, we had a venue that was a rural winery- narrow back roads to get to it. The most direct route from a highway involved a small one lane bridge that was also at an odd angle, and pretty much anything bigger then a mini van could not clear it.

Shuttle buses got stuck constantly. We would call the shuttle companies directly to explain the issue and give the directions to the bridge-free way of getting there, and it didn't matter.

The drivers would always try to take the direct route, get to a point they couldn't go any further, sit for a while, then finally drive the 15 minutes to get to the other entrance. The venue even tried posting signage before the bridge to let people know and it didn't make a difference.

ghostnthegraveyard said:

We hired a shuttle to take people back to the hotel after our wedding. The shuttle is packed, ready to leave, and my uncle staggers up. There are no seats left so the driver lets him ride shotgun.

Turns out, my uncle was friends with the driver in high school 30 years earlier and they reconnect on the drive. Unc later tells us he learned the driver had a good white collar career in finance or something but lost his job because of a litany of DUIs.

No-Appearance9050 said:

This happened at my Bat Mitzvah! The venue was around the corner from the temple and the shuttle drove 20 minutes in the other direction haha. Congratulations on your wedding, it’s ultimately a funny story you’ll always look back on and laugh at.

JesusGodLeah said:

When my boyfriend's cousin got married, out-of town guests stayed at one of two hotels. Our hotel was a two-minute drive from the venue. The other one was 10 minutes away. They had a shuttle service that went in a loop fr9m one hotel to the other hotel to the venue.

My boyfriend and I ducked out a bit early so we could have some alone time in the hotel room (we were sharing a room with his parents). We thought that the shuttle would stop at our hotel first because it was closer, but no! We had to ride 10 minutes to the farther hotel, then another 10-ish minutes back to our hotel.

I texted my boyfriend's mom to let her know that the shuttle goes to the farther hotel first, so the rest of the family wouldn't freak out and go, "Where are they taking us?!" She texted me.when they got on the shuttle, so I turned to my boyfriend and said, "Great! We have approximately 20 minutes!" All's well that ended well!

guac-amolly said:

We hired a bus company for our wedding since our ceremony was 45 minutes from our reception and also in a limited parking area. While our bus didn’t drive the wrong way, they didn’t seem to think it was necessary to let us know the AC was out. We got married in the Las Vegas desert…when it was 90 degrees.