Alcohol Budget

We also have a booze loving guest list! My mom and stepdad are getting wine made fore the wedding and covering that cost for us. We will probably end up with 30 bottlesz maybe more for personal use my future in-laws are covering the rest of the bar. We are thinking 2-3 beers, vodka, rum, bourbon/whiskey and maybe gin.

Its included in our catering package at Pillar and Post.

View quoted message For us kegs was significantly cheaper than buying bottles of craft beer.... And my fience is kinda a beer snob haha so he only drinks craft beer now. And beer tastes better out of a tap than a bottle! And i think untapped kegs can still be returned to the breweries.
Downside is you get less beer selection and if someone doesnt like the keg beer they are outta luck.
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We are having 120-150 people, the bartender fees and tips all included. I think a bit pricey now that i read comments lol but should be fun

Same here! We have an environment consisting of drinkers! We computed an average of 8 drinks and 2 glasses of wine per person.

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We had a great bartender. She asked us at the beginning of the night which bottles to start with so we knew how many she was opening. Toward the end of the night, she also asked before opening any new bottles which was great because we could decide if it was a type of liquor that we wanted to keep or return.

View quoted message I think heavy drinkers will have 1-2 per hour, most people will have 1 every hour to hour and a half. Find out how much they charge, if it's per drink or bottles of things because that can affect the price like crazy especially if you are having an open bar.

View quoted message Yes! I think it depends if you have good connections or know a vendor that does! It seems like some people can get their alcohol super cheap and others it costs an arm and a leg!

View quoted message Okay cool!! Ill have to look into that!!

I just need to make sure I have good bartenders that don't open multiple cases of the same product and then can't return things. It's like.. Really 🙄 Last hour of the night and your open two?? Why? (Happened at a family members wedding)
Haha cross our fingers they are good!

View quoted message Yes that would be awesome to see it! And that seems reasonable! I just want to make sure I have my numbers crunched sooner rather than later that way I will for sure have the money for the liquor then lol

View quoted message That's pretty good cost wise! I may have to look into kegs from a local brewing company in our area to see if that helps to bring the costs a little lower than buying cases.

View quoted message How many people did you have? If you don't mind me asking? We were contemplating open bar for a while but we are 30 minutes from the hotel so we don't want people too intoxicated and we've also heard of a lot of wastage (depends on the bartender I've heard). Good for you though hope it turned out!

View quoted message That's not too bad!!! I am having trouble guesstimating my budget for it! I'm thinking between **** including the servers but I'm not entirely sure yet! So many factors!!

We are in the same boat, although our guests aren't huge drinkers. We have budgetted $1500 for alcohol (including 2 servers) for 100 people. Our plan is, once it's gone, it's gone. I don't want people to be too intoxicated at my wedding anyway.

My friend got married in October and so I asked him what they did. He said they were told one drink per hour for the heavy drinkers. They had 150 guests, and this is what they spent: made their own wine (which cost them $950 for white and red for each table), 12 24 cases of beer, 7 6-pack of cider, 6 bottles vodka and rum which was $700. They also bought 2 cases coke, 1 case ginger ale, 4 jugs of orange juice and cranberry juice which was $150. They ended up returning about half of what they bought. But, I think their crowd didn't consist of too many heavy drinkers.

We went with Open Bar option from our venue, since we got the catering with them thay gave it to us at a very resonable price (around $3500). They did suggest doing the bar based on consumption but knowing our families open bar all the way for my reception.

I don't have a number for what we are spending on alcohol.... But we have 150 guests and they will drink a lot.

We have purchased (or self bottled) 10 cases of wine as it has come on wicked sales (at average $11/bottle = $1500ish) and we will be getting 3 kegs of craft beer (approx $180/ keg= $540) and a flat or 2 of cheap beer for our non-craft loving guests. (Approx $100) Might throw in a couple flats of ciders or something.(approx $100) But avoiding the hard bar so a) people hopefully dont get too messy and b) save some cash.

And we will have no bartender and no liquor licence needed because backyard wedding so saving some money there.

Soo we are probably looking at $2500 all said and done. Which now that i add it up for the first time is a lot more money than i expected to spend....

We have budgeted $1,000 and we have about 45-50 guests. I have a paper somewhere from my venue that shows you how much of each alcohol you should buy based on the number of guests. I'll look for it tonight and post for you

Http://foodanddrink.ca/lcbo-ear/jsp/calculator.jsp

This is a good place to start, but they limit the length of the party to 3 hours, I think. Whatever you think you'll need, get more. You can always return the excess, unopened bottles after the wedding and get your money back. We had tons of beer left over because our normally beer loving crowd was much more into liquor that night.

I am also having this issue! Haha. Right now, I have $2000 budgeted for alcohol alone and some of my family (my mother and my future SIL) don’t know if that would be enough. So the more information I can get, the better!

I am also trying to figure this out! We have to use our venue's liquor and bartenders, so I'm not that much help in that area. But interested to see if anyone has some insight! We are having about 120 people and our crowd is also big on the booze haha, so I'm kind of nervous about the bar tab!! 🙈 I don't even know where to begin to estimate how many drinks each guest will have on average... yikes!