How much Alcohol?

I have used this calculator for party planning with my work, you can adjust based on preferences (example: you want a bit of everything, but if you know your crew is more into wine than spirits you can change the percentages), party time, and of course guest count: Drink Calculator

If you have excess, you can always return unopened bottles to the LCBO too.

It'll depend on how much your family drinks. If you're also serving spirits, I think 2-3 additional drinks per person will suffice depending on how long you plan on keeping the party going. So two 24s, four bottles of wine, and two sparkling for toast? The slow drinkers will likely keep to one drink in addition to their toast while the bigger drinks can take whatever leftovers was allocated to slow drinkers.

We had about 20 at our small reception too! We had wine and sparkling wine for toasting and asked people to bring anything else so we could avoid some of the stress of guessing. I ended up with double the wine we needed even after the clerk at the liquor store helped us do sparkling wine math. If I did it again I would get 1- 2 boxes or about 6-8 bottles of white, skip the bottle of red, 1 case of domestic beer, and one case of micro brew beer and *maybe* make a boozy punch instead of buying multiple kinds of spirits.


I would do a small survey of what people like to drink, not specific brands but to get an idea of whether you even need red wine or if you have a bunch of mikes lemonade fans. Maybe ask a family member or someone in the wedding party to ask around. Also ask your local store what their policy on returning unopened booze is! Which reminds me I need to return what we didn't drink...