Buying your own alcohol for 250 guests

I know there are a few brides here who have used some sort of calculator to help you decide how much to buy. Hoping they can share!

If possible buy your beer, wine, and liquor at Costco. They will let you return it as long as it's not opened, unless it's a case of beer than the top can be open but no missing bottles. When it comes to alcohol for a wedding always go with more is better since it's better to have extra than to run out. There are plenty of alcohol calculators out there that can help. If it says to get 10 bottles of vodka, I'd get 12 to be safe.

For me I wouldn’t save the Champagne for the toasts, so I’d not get as many bottles..
Wine figure there’s, in a reasonable/normal pour, 5.5 glasses per bottle. Figure most people will do 2-4glasses. So that would be about 130 bottles of Red, White and sweet white/rosè wine.
Vodka & Whiskey I would imagine you’d need 50 bottles. Of course that’s assuming they Love vodka and are using it as a mixer too. And I’d probably have a couple types( or flavors of Vodka) of each... Especially the Whiskey/Scotch. McCallen 12 is a nice higher end Scotch that is approachable by most.
I could be way off- and probably am, but that’s what I’d do...

Following- we are supplying our own alcohol too. I've seen all the calculators but I don't feel like any of them factor in the number of options of drinks there may be?

I used big red liquors drink calculator and it was accurate and helpful. We also have a DOC who has advised us on round about numbers for alcohol but the drink calculator on there was great.

If possible, buy bulk or cases. We also bought all of our wine from a local winery that did bogo cases. We saved a ton of money and whatever we don't drink we can return, most stores follow this policy. Look into deals at your local grocery stores for beer and wine, and the liquor store may have some here and there as well.

The easiest way for us was to buy over time. We wanted to make sure we collected everything over our engagement so we weren't hit with the big bill at the end.

Following also, we are buying ours, I was told by the bartender that $500 is probably the most I would spend, what that becomes individually idk. I'm going to try the calculator someone above suggests

View Quoted Comment Thank you. We are a Russian family so we will have a lot to vodka drinkers! Also are you saying 130 bottles of each type of wine or all in? Like 130 of white and another 130 of red. We have drinkers and with 250 people I’m so scared I will run out.

View Quoted Comment I would have at least 100 of each. Simply because I wouldn’t want to run out either. And what’s the worst that happens? You have some to take home or let people take to the hotels?! Lol...
WineAccess has cases of AWESOME wine- depending on state you’re in, it can be shipped to you. I live in VA so it’s ok to have it sent but MD I don’t think they allow....

Also, I’d prolly have 50-75 bottles of vodka and less of Whiskey/Scotch lol!

Consider doing a "controlled" bar where you are only buying select liquors of your choosing.

For example, I will only be serving bourbon, rum, beer, and wine. This eliminates needing to buy twelve different things. I have twelve big bottles of Rum and 12 bottles of bourbon which my bartender said was plenty (for 225 guests). I haven't purchased my wine or beer yet.

My bartender also stated that if you serve wine you want to have three options: sweet white, dry white, and a red. I will be purchasing my wine from a local vineyard so it will all be the same brand and some places will discount when you buy in bulk.

Look around for pricing, some places will be cheaper versus others. Small liquor stores charge more! Kroger and Meijer normally have lower pricing.

I can't speak on the behalf of normal whiskey as I'm from Kentucky and bourbon is our thing lol. If you are looking for a cheaper bourbon to use for mixers; go with Jim Beam, Heaven Hills, or Evan Williams. Just your off the shelf basic bourbon. Once you start getting fancy with it (ex: small batch) you will spend more money.

Like everyone said above, buy from places that will let you return. You will want to buy more than you actually think you need.

View Quoted Comment If your scared to run out, definitely find a store where you can return unopened bottles to, and over buy! While the calculators are helpful, they don’t know your guests like you do— A lot of liquor stores will do this, but everyone has slightly different rules so make sure you check Each store is fine print details (Some won’t take back open cases, Some won’t take back anything that has been chilled, some will etc). Overbuying and returning worked out very well for us.

Most of the online calculators are based on moderate consumption so if you know you have big drinkers or a crowd where pretty much everyone drinks, ROUND UP. We basically doubled what the calculators suggested and that seemed about right haha (big Irish Family here. Literally no non-drinkers in the bunch).

Wine is tricky because it depends who drinks what, but we did about 10 cases total for 125- 2 types of reds (Pinot noir and Cabernet) 2 cases of each.
2 types of whites (Chardonnay and Sauvignon blanc) 2 cases of each
1 case prosecco
1 case rose
annnddd then we got a handful of supplemental loose bottles of the couple things we thought would go fast.
A nd our guests did serious work! We finished the Rose (it was a last minute add on and a surprise favorite!) and the Chardonnay completely (though I have a suspicion one of the bartenders wasn’t differentiating between the two whites 😱 as we didn’t run out of sauv blanc AND later discovered that one of the cases was left in the car haha, so I guess minus one from my case-count). The only wine we had any significant leftovers of was the Pinot noir.

Hello Carey,


I’m basically in the same situation as you were a year ago, same amount of guests and drink selection. Can you share some information about how you went about buying and if you purchased enough or too little?
I’m just as confused as quantity are you were.
Thank you