Beer vs Wine?

We're having a really small reception this year and my plan is to have wine only. It's exclusively our closest friends and the family that are local so we've let people know if they want anything else to drop it off the week before. They're all excited that there won't be a bar, just the booze.
(I know BYOB doesn't work in a lot of situations, and it's sometimes frowned upon but our friends actually suggested it!)

We're going ahead with the open bar. Our guests will be served at their tables instead of going to the bar.

This would be such a hard choice for us - I'd say our crowd is 50/50 beer and wine.

As of right now, we plan on open bar. If COVID is still roaring next September we will likely do something small in the backyards of our family for a "reception" and we'd probably provide both for everyone. It would just be too hard to choose.

We also cut our open bar. We are having red and white wine at the tables (everyone stays at the table with their own bubble) and pop, juice, tea or coffee can be ordered and brought to them.

View quoted message

That's true about beer not being gluten free. But it does come with more selection since I can have three kinds of beer versus just one red and one white.

If we had a regular party during non-covid times, we'd stick with the open bar but with the restrictions in place, our reception won't last for three hours, let alone the six that our package comes with. So it just won't make sense for us to have an open bar.

View quoted message

For sure. Just trying to price it out in a way that makes actual sense, savings wise. If it doesn't amount to saving at least half on the bar tab, I feel like we might as well just splurge for the unlimited alcohol.

And if I'm doing consumption, I feel like the only way it can work is to limit the number of actual drinks served. Otherwise, there's always that one person who will go nuts.

My fiance and I's wedding venue is providing all of the liquor for the evening. All of the wine is coming from the winery itself (they have amazing wine! Summerhill Pyramid Winery) and for everything else will be just like a normal bar. So pretty much any kind of drink you could think of!

We are not doing host bar, we have decided on cash bar since we both know each of our families can drink a lot and we didn't want to be accountable for all of that in the end.

We are doing wine service and they can order whatever they want from the servers. We chose not to do the open bar package and just pay per consumption (even in non covid times we were always going to do per consumption). I think if there is no dancing and cocktail hour (like ours will be) the per consumption is almost guaranteed to be cheaper than paying open bar per guest.

If it was beer OR wine, I'd go with wine. It appeals to a larger group of people and less issues with dietary restrictions (beer isn't gluten free). We are making our wine (Bordeaux, Cab Sauv, Cardonnay, and Sauv Blanc) and bringing in a selection of beer on top of a selection of spirits. Open bar is very important to us so if we can't have dancing we'd probably just postpone!

I’m not sure between drink tickets and wine. Depends on the people, and types of wine. I’m a snobby wine drinker, I hate cheaper wines, and usually cause headaches and/or teeth staining lol so if it’s nice wine, i would be grateful to have a bottle at the table! I think the drink tickets would allow for a couple more choices in drinks. You also wouldn’t need to worry about all those hands on the wine bottle during covid.

We are planning on a 5 hour bar service, It will be open bar, but only offering certain choices. Red and white wine (not sure which ones yet) champagne, Heineken and Red stripe beer, and rum punch.