Wedding Planning: Transportation

Wedding day logistics. Somewhat of a nightmare. The closer we get, the more real our wedding becomes. I have to say, seeing our names on our invitations was quite a shock to us both. Also a little wake up call that this wedding is happening and we need to organize the details of the day!

Once the food, flowers, and dress are taken care of, its easy to assume all is well. But of course, there is so much more and it sometimes hits me like a little bit of a panic attack. One of those things is transportation.

As I said in my liquor post, a limousine is one of the things that doesn't fit into our post-moving wedding budget. It would make our lives much easier, so we are trying to pinch pennies and see if we can make it happen, but in the likely case it doesn't, I need some advice on how to handle this situation:

1. Me, my parents, and 5 bridesmaids going from the hotel to the ceremony.
2. Aaron and I, 10 wedding party members, and 1 photographer driving around Kalamazoo taking photos for 3-4 hours.
4. Somewhere to toast our marriage vows with delicious champagne!
3. Making it to the reception with all of those people and having parking.

This means we need transportation for 8 people in the morning and 13 people the rest of the day. Also, keep in mind that whatever we ride in to the ceremony is what I will be stepping out of in my wedding dress and walking straight down the aisle!

Aaron's dad does have this lovely Mustang that we could drive around, but if it rains then its out and it will only hold four people. We would need two cars in the morning, which is doable. But after the ceremony we would need 2 reg. cars and a van/suv.

There are a lot of great places to take pictures in Kalamazoo, but I don't want to be trekking around too much in my wedding dress, especially if its hot or raining. So ideally our cars would be able to stay with us, but parking is also somewhat of a challenge downtown.

So people who have been married recently, how did you decide how to get where you were going? Intelligent people who weren't married recently, what would you suggest? We are at a standstill on this so any suggestions are helpful!