Brides with a bar tab! Question for ya :)

I didn't know u could do that, why not have an open bar so u don't have to worry about that.

You're not going to believe it, but I actually do not remember the amount. We had 45 guests (all over 21), and a full top shelf open bar, but some selections were limited. Like you couldn't order a 100 year old something. The cocktail hour and reception were from 6-12 pm. I do know that it was much less than we anticipated. On average, people had about 2-3 alcoholic drinks during the whole evening.

Whether your tab will cover everything also depends on how much they're charging for drinks. Our tab was generally speaking high, but we had rather expensive wine.

We aren't doing thus, but my friend had one of these. Her work put $1500 for them to use for the bar tab and they would add onto it once it was gone. They had about 175 people and the tab was closed before they even got to the venue after pictures! It mainly depends on your crowd of people.

Our venue actually doesn't offer a true open bar. It's just their particular rules. We *can* add to our bar tab throughout the night if desired. And there's no limit to how much money we can put on the bar tab. We're just trying to get a ballpark idea of how much we'll go through! Drinks are priced fairly reasonably for the venue, $4 for beer/wine and $7 for the signature drink.

So if on average a drink is $6 (yes, I know it's not a true average, it's just for calculation purposes), your tab covers approximately 420 drinks. Assuming about 120 people drink, that's about 3.5 drinks per person. That should be plenty. If the majority of your guests are social drinkers, they will not have more than 4 drinks in 4 hours.

Thanks, Mrs. S! Your assumptions are pretty spot on. I think it's plenty, too.

We are doing an open bar but im hiring 2 bartenders and we are going to spend like 700 on liquor and about 300 for the bar tenders to save money this way. We are having 6 hour reception but the bartenders will be there till 12am and we will cut drinks off at this time With our cater package we will be speindg about 2600 for there open bar stuff.

It depends on what booze costs at your location. We paid for wine seperately at $18 a bottle with 2 bottles per table for 10 tables that was $600.

Our coctail hour for 85 guest ran us about $300 that was 4:30-6pm

Our drinks were average of $5 each and our total was $2300 from 7pm-1:30am. (again for 85 guests)

It will depend on how much per drink you are paying, how long your bar is open.
We figured on 5drinks per person plus wine. We knew our friends would have more and some older relatives would have less.

All our guests except 4 were drinking age (though here it's 19 and up)

It was not full bar we did not include shots (or we would have been broke) However they were there for purchase and many people purchased them. We also did not include premium liquor. We stuck to domestic vodka, rum, rye, gin, wiskey, scotch, had one choice of cooler, and 4 beer choices.

We are just buying the alcohol based on how many people we have on the guest list and then knocking out the ones under 21, the ones who don't drink, and then you need to think about people driving home. Once a beverage is out, it's out, point blank period!

We are also doing beer/wine/ signature drink for about 150 people. our caterer gave us an estimate on the higher side saying about $20 a person so total around $3000. our reception is from 6-11, but our caterer said to only do our open bar from 6-10 for legal purposes. If you buy someone their last drink(ie open bar) and they get in an accident you are responsible, at least in MA. So that might save some money too!

Can you find out how much they charge per drink? I think Mrs. S is about right but if you can get a better idea of the per drink it might help.

If you have ADULTS at your party and you have a venue that serves, it is not your responsibility to make sure no one is driving it is the venues. they are the liable ones, also if you know someone drinks and drives all teh time you might want to alert the venue ahead of time so they know who to cut off.

Also I and all my friends are also assholes like Amy V. but it all works out cause all my friends were "assholes" at my wedding and i'll be an asshole at theirs. (if drinking over 3 drinks is assholish, but I'd also drink that if I was throwing my own party... and did at my own wedding)

@Stephanie W. I did track that down, it's $4 for beer/wine and $7 for the signature drink so not TOO bad! I think we'll be okay with the $2500 tab. If not, we can always add to it on the spot the night of, or switch to cash bar.

@Lindsay W - that's a really good point about people driving home. I don't think there's a similar law here in MD, but I'll talk to the venue about closing the bar at 9:30 or so, which I'm sure is standard practice anyway. We're still a year+ out so we haven't gone into specifics!

For all the "assholes" who take advantage, there will also be people who won't drink or can't drink. It still probably evens out.

We have a full open bar with top shelf liquor, beer, wine, and a signature drink which was included in our cost of the Reception with meals and Ceremony. We estimated 120 people going and about 90 people drinking where most of these people are heavy drinkers (heavy but sturdy, not sloppy drinkers) and it comes to about $12 a person which to us is great because all of those people could easily rack up a $60 + bar tab on themselves alone. I went out the other night and had dinner and 2 beers at $40 for myself so $12 per person for however much they want to drink is great.

What Beth said is true too. Jared the Pigman has to take Amy home, so he will drink less. Also, not everybody will start drinking at 6 o'clock sharp, and they will not order the last drink at 10. So you're probably looking at about 3 hours.

Also make sure to take in account shots! My brother and SIL had a tab which they thought was plenty but the bartender was serving shots to people which quickly made the cost creep up!

Another note is that our open bar will start at cocktail hour which will give us 5 1/2 hours of drinking time and I know 90% of the people going will start drinking as soon as it's available. I'm really happy that there is no cap or limit on the open bar we have included in our venue and they can drink however much they want and whatever they want as long as it's available at the bar.

Poor Jared the Pigman, DD-ing again so that Amy can have all the fun He's quite the trooper.