Open Bar for Around 50 to 60 Guests - Cost?

We had a small wedding of 72 guests and the open bar was included except for dinner time when wine was served by the servers. The package was including the bar.

I would check if the bar can be close for dinner portion and have that extra time towards that extra hour needed. $750 seems excessive for an the cost. Your budget can fit it, then go for it.

Hi everyone,
Thanks for the awesome suggestions!

During the cocktail hour, we want to do a bar that only offers one signature drink and one non alcoholic drink, so 2 choices.

There won’t be an open bar at dinner time, but after the dinner, the open bar would open from 7:30 to 10:30, so three hours.

The most expensive drink is $8 plus gratuity and tax which is estimated to be around $10.

I guess in total the time would be 3-4 hours, that means i’ll be spending around $750 per hour.

I hope this is enough! What do you guys think?

As a BC bride, my gut reaction is no. Cus it's 15% tax (5% GST + 10% PST for alcohol tax), plus most venues charge minimum 15% set gratuity.... I'm just doing 2 bottles of wine per table (12 tables), 2 drink tickets (approx $6 average), and a champagne toast, and with tax and gratuity it's about $3,200... granted this is for 96 people... but it's not open bar... it's about 4 or 5 drinks per person...

If you have even a small group that are bigger drinkers, it can get out of hand FAST. Also, my sister was looking into a golf course wedding, where they know they'd make a lot more money on an open bar, but they strongly urged her not to. They said at weddings with open bars, people get a drink, put it down, and lose track, and because they didn't pay for it, they give up and just go get a fresh drink... the servers say it's gut wrenching cleaning up at the end of the night to find so many full drinks with a few sips out of it, and they know you (the host) were charged for it.

I think nowadays, especially in BC, people know how expensive it can be... so I'd maybe consider something along the lines of drink tickets... or just wine/beer included... or a variation... My cousin did open bar just for his cocktail hour, and it worked great cus people felt a little spoiled with the open bar, but no one went crazy and got trashed before dinner... so even though it swapped to cash bar, people felt like they'd done something nice for the guests.

I also agree with what Donna said... there's a lot of things to put your money towards, and personally, I don't think booze is a priority on my list... If it was in my wedding budget, I'd lean more towards an extra late night snack, some sort of entertainment... or upgrading our room on our honeymoon cruise... haha.

Totally up to you! But be warned, that BC is the LEAST affordable province to do an open bar... and you'd need to double check with your venue as to what their host packages are to see if it's doable within your budget! Good luck!

Over all an open bar is very expensive so it's up to you as a couple. Ask yourself you wanna be spend $3000-$5000 on drinks when you could use that money towards your honeymoon, or something else. We haven't gotten married yet, We are going through on having 2 bartenders their included in our Package through our Venue. We will supply the: Pop,water, I don't recall if we're suppling the beer also, but one of the other girls mentioned whatever you don't use and not opened you can return them or keep them for another party. Guest will have 2 bottles of wine on their tables. That's plenty enough. Hope this helps good luck

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I'm all about the over estimating rather than being under what you need.

My venue suggested that for open bar, it's like paying about 60$ for each person. Which is kind a LOT. So we ended up going with a toonie bar instead to help cover the cost.

Our venues uses the one drink per person per hour for their open bar estimate, so I took the most expensive drink and used that as a starting point. Not the most realistic calculation but a good place to start nonetheless. When calculating the cost of drinks, don’t forget to use the total cost including tax and any auto-gratuity that they add to the bill.

That's a tough question. Are you doing wine and beer only? Or wine, beer and mixed drinks? How long is the open bar for - the whole event (in which case, how many hours? 5? 7? 9?) or just a portion (cocktail hour and dinner)? Are they heavy drinkers, or lighter ones?

Good rule of thumb is:

Most expensive drink price X (1+# of hours) X # of guests

So, let's say that the most expensive drink is 8$, your event is for 7 hours (from 5 pm to midnight) and there will be 60 guests. The equation would look like this:

8 x (1+7) x 60 = 3840$

On top of that, you'll want to factor in whether you intend for your guests to tip the bar staff, or whether you will cover the tip (typically, you will with an open bar). That is usually another 100-200$ per bartender for the night.

Are you wanting $3000 for the open bar portion? or trying for the whole wedding?

For me in Ontario, our bar estimate is $6000 for an open bar for 200 people. we have a venue in which we can bring in all our own alcohol. and for a per person fee the venue supplies all the barware, mixes etc. this estimate is us also over buying on alcohol since we can return anything that is unopened.