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@kn8973: Ugh, we're in the same boat that you are and it really really sucks. We have about 200 adults coming, only 80 of those people will really drink and about 50 of those wil drink a lot. We thought we would do a consumption list as well but then FI put it all in a spreadsheet and calculated that if the heavy drinkers had one drink an hour and the light drinkers had half a drink an hour, we'd be at $8K. The difference for us between paying by hour would be something like 220 drinks for the entire night. So basically, if we people had one more drink than we planned we'd be at the hourly rate anyway. This doesn't include soft drinks, waters, etc that we still have to pay for for everyone else. And I know the caterers will take away any drink that people put down so we'd be super tense about people putting drinks down before they finish them.
So basically, we're planning on paying around 11K for drinks. I can't believe it.
Oh wow! That is quite a bit just for alcohol! Now that really makes me second guess my initial plan of $4k tab.
@kn8973: Yeah, it's tough. This includes all beverages though, not just alcohol. A lot of it depends on how much the drinks are at your venue. For us, each drink was an average of about $8, sodas and bottled water are $4. So it'so n the more expensive side. I'd do a similar calculation with the average cost of a drink at your wedding and 2 drinks/hour for the first hour for the heavys and half a drink/hour for the light and then the soft drinks/water for everyone else. If your drink prices are less than what we are paying, you might spend less!
Whatever you do, I'd reconsider putting a tab on it - once people find out that there's a time or money limit, they'll start ordering multiple drinks at a time and pounding them before the deadline. Trust me on this as I've both watched it in action AND taken advantage of it myself. So the money/time will run out sooner than you might expect and then you're left with a cash bar - which isn't a problem but can get kinda hairy.
I'd suggest simply doing a limited bar with a few cocktails, beer and wine, or only a signature drink and letting people pay for themselves otherwise.
We are spending $0. We are having an evening wedding with cake, coffee and punch afterwards. We are having a pig roast the following day. We do not drink alcohol, but friends are welcomed to bring beer or whatever to the pig roast.
I can't really offer advice, as we haven't had our wedding yet. But I totally empathize with you because we are having the same dilemma! We aren't considering having a tab limit, but we are debating between paying the flat fee for open bar all night or paying based on consumption. We have tried to work everything out with numbers, but the reality is that you have to try to guess what people will drink, which is really difficult (and sort of impossible). After all our calculations, I think it would be cheaper to pay per drink but not by alot. And if your guestimates are off, then we might end up paying more than the flat rate. So, I think we'll do the flat rate, just because it's almost like insurance - at least this way we know we won't go over the amount we are budgeting (even though it sucks that we might end up paying more than we need to). Ugh, so hard to know!
The best advice I can give is to establish a budget and try your best to negotiate with the vendors. Some questions to ask them is, 'is this the best deal/price you can give us? is there anything else you can offer? (also before meeting them, try to think of anything that wouldn't be too much for them to add).' For instance, caterers should be willing to provide free soft drinks when you are spending a majority of the budget with them. When we would negotiate prices, we would let the vendors know that we are having over 200 people at the wedding. Which is good exposure for their company and you really want to do business with them if they can give you the best deal. The more practice you spend negotiating, the better you will get.
We had our wedding in Nov and luckily the venue allowed us to bring in alcohol but we had to use their bartender. Their bartender cost around $600 which included cups and ice from 6pm - 11pm. He was a good guy and even let us drop off the alcohol a couple of days before so they could be chilled. We ultimately had around 260 people at our wedding in Atlanta, GA.
We spent around $930 on buying alcohol. His friend is a bartender and advised him to stick with two brands of beer, one brand of red and white wine, then some bottles of premium alcohol. The alcohol store allowed him to return any alcohol that wasn't used and in good condition so we were able to get around $300 back. We didn't have too many heavy drinkers and our bartender said that he wouldn't be too generous.
My husband is really good at negotiating so we were able to get our caterer to provide free sodas and a free bottle of champagne for each table (which cost around $3-$6 but maybe it's cheaper for them). Talk to your vendors and see what they might be able to do to help out. I'm sure they would want a good referral from you after the wedding is over.
It is also ok if you set a tab on your wedding.. you don't want to go bankrupt because of one night! :) Plus that night is going to go by sooo fast!
Is the price difference huge between a hosted bar and the $4000 tab? We haven't had our wedding yet but every wedding I've been too with a tab bar, the couple ended up adding more later on in the night. We're doing a full host bar, we were going to do a soft bar, but the difference was only a few dollars per person.
A house brand open bar is about $6900 for 150 guests. This does not include bartender fees or glassware that our caterer is also charging us. Unfortunately, I don't think I can try to do much negotiating because our venue requires us to get the alcohol through this specific caterer because they hold the license and we have opted out of getting our food catered through them too. Their fee was outrageous compared to other caterers.
Can you just host beer and wine? Or are they making you have a fully open bar?
I think we paid $32.00 pp for beer, wine and house liquor. we only had 120 people so we paid just over 4k including taxes and tip. How much does it cost to have limited open bar per person at your venue? i know we had a choice of just beer/wine which was cheaper than the 32.00pp and we had origianlly planned on doing just that but my dad changed it at the last minute to include liquor for a little bit higher price. is that an option? just beer and wine?
We are having an open bar. Its part of our package at the reception venue. $53/person includes the meal and open bar.
I chose my venue based on this topic.
I chose one that let us bring in a liquor store that had the right permits. We paid retail liquor store price for the alcohol we used. We got to choose what was offered as well. So if we used 5 bottles of Smirnoff Vodka we paid for what you would pay for it at the store. We paid for two bartenders and the rentals as well. The liquor store arranged the bartenders and delivery of the alchohol and mixers and ice. they took back anything unopened and we were not charged.
All in all we had open bar from 3 pm to 1030 pm for 165 people and it cost us with rentals and tip about $1800
We decided not to host liquor, the prices can get outrageous really fast!
We are being charged 2.50 a soda, 300 a keg and if we go with champagne and wine that will be 25 bucks a bottle.
We are still deciding if we are going to have a happy hour. For a cheap liquor in a signature drink can range from 6-8 bucks a drink, which isnt too bad. I'd just prefer not to have poeple totally wasted and to look back and think wehy did i waste so much money on liqour...
We don't have a venue, just a backyard so we are just doing signature drinks (pre mixed), a few extra liquors to mix in with sodas and such and mostly beer and a few wines (only a couple people will actually be drinking wine)... Our budget is $1300, but we are doing serve yourself and our guest count is (hopefully) around 130, not all of whom are old enough to drink and not all of them do drink, and some drink a LOT! We come from a family of bar owners so we can get good deals on alcohol and we don't need to hire bartenders since it's serve yourself. With a crowd full of bartenders, bar owners and bouncers we think we're covered if people start to over indulge. :)
I don't think you should charge your guests for alcohol... many of them are making a huge effort (and spending a lot of money) to be there to celebrate with you, and to make them pay for their drinks doesn't seem like the best move.
Instead -- consider just offering beer and wine, and/or offerring one or two signature drinks. That'll keep costs lower!
we got to bring in our own alcohol...we would ONLY go to a place that let us do this. We spent $3000 on ALL booze (wine, all liquor, beer) for a 270 person wedding
4k won't cut it for 175 guests with a full open bar serving beer, wine and liquor. 4k would absolutely cover a beer and wine or beer, wine and signature drink bar. I think as long as you offer something that is more than good enough. Just don't have guests open their pockets. Good luck, alcohol is a sore subject for us too. My family doesn't drink and it irks me how much I am spending for his family to get wasted.
Oh no asking my guests to pay for their own alcohol is definately out of the question. We will be covering the bar tab, but just debating which route would be worth the money (based on consumption or a fully open bar).
We spent $15 for a full premium bar a person plus $5 a person for soda/tea/water.
We thought we got a really, really good deal! I saw a lot of places in my area that cost $40 a person. I'm sure my guests drank more than $15 in liquor/wine during my 6 hour reception.
My price per person is about $46 for 5 hours, which is only house brand. Unfortunately it is very hard to find a venue in my area that allows outside alcohol.
@kn8973: It was really hard for us to find a place that let us bring our own alcohol in for the number of people that we have. We found one, but neither FI nor I really liekd it. For us, it was the taxes and fees that killed us. 22% service charge, 8% sales tax and then a 3% city liquor tax and bartender fees. Just the beverages (alcohol and soft drinks) at 40/pp for 6 hours puts us around 7800. With all of the taxes and fees, we're at 11K. We haven't signed a contract yet though and I'm hoping that my wedding planner can negotiate it down a little, but I don't have my hopes up!
It sucks, but it'll be nice not to have to worry about it during the wedding like I know we would if we payed based on consumption.
Same here, taxes for my area is 8.25% and service charge is 21% and on top of that they are charging seperately for labor fees for the bartenders and glassware rentals! I'm considering a different venue that doesn't nickle and dime you for everything, but this was my dream venue =/
@kn8973: We're going with our dream venue too even though we can save a little (a lot) by doing it in the place where we bring our own alcohol. However, the taxes and fees were pretty much the same at every other place we looked that didn't allow you to bring your own stuff in. We're trying to cut down in other places - like decorations. The place is so beautiful we don't need too much. We're also maybe only doing beer and wine at the welcome cocktail party instead of a full bar so hopefully that will cut down on other stuff.
We spent 80 bucks on a keg we didn't even order (because we did a cash bar) but the venue made us pay for it anyways. It wasn't that much money, but it ruined the evening for me because they were jerks about it and screwed us over.
We would never do a consumption based bar, although I think our crowd generally drinks a bit more than average. The venue I LOVED would only do consumption. We decided not to go through them for that reason and a few others. We're now paying $30 per adult for a premium open bar. It's a lot of money, but I don't have to worry at all about how expensive the bar is getting or whether people are setting down drinks.
We're spending $1600 on 50 bottles of wine for dinner (we're having 89 guests, so that's like half a bottle of wine per person, not considering all the guests who do not drink, which is a good amount of them). There is also a cash bar.
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Hi Bees,
I'm debating between an open bar, or setting a TAB bar. We do not have many heavy drinkers, and if they are heavy, they drink beer. We're trying to decide if it would be worth having a fully open bar paid per person or just have a tab bar set at $4000 based on consumption. Our guest list is at 175 so I'm not sure if $4000 would even be enough =/. It's going to be a Saturday evening wedding from 7pm-1am. If you had a tab bar, what did you end up spending on the bar and how many guests did you have?
Thanks!!!