BYO Alcohol Questions

We did! It's an amazing cost saver! For beer we kept it very simple and bought a keg (FH picked as I don't drink beer), white wine, several red wines and then rum, vodka and gin. For mix we had a couple soda flavors and three large serve your self juice dispensers of Lemonaid, Iced Tea and Cran-rasp juice which all doubled as non-alcoholic drinks and mixer. It went over really well and was very manageable, we had 91 guests and 1 bartender.

I have the same BYOB with our venue and I'm pretty much planning on doing exactly what your planning. As for beer have you considered getting a keg? I think their pretty cheap and won't have to worry about cans and bottles laying around.

As far as the guests been picky I doubt that would be an issue. No one should complain about free drinks!

We are also allowed to do BYO. We're just stumped on how much to do. Our guests could drink all of the variety, so whats the best fraction of each...i dunno!

Shelly, can you advise on how much of each (if its not too much trouble) you had to buy for 91 guests?

ie: bottles of liqour, wine, and did you do just one full size keg?

We're at a place that allows us to BYO alcohol. We're working with a supplier that will bring the alcohol and pick up any unused bottles. Here's the suggested list they gave us. Sorry this is so long! I can e-mail you the spreadsheet with the counts if you want it.

ABSOLUT VODKA 80

ABSOLUT VODKA CITRON

DEWARS

TANQUERAY GIN

CROWN ROYAL

JAMESON IRISH WHISKEY

JACK DANIELS

BACARDI SUPERIOR

CAPT MORGAN RUM ORIG SPICED

M & R VERMOUTH SWEET

M & R VERMOUTH DRY

LEROUX TRIPLE SEC

KAHLUA

BAILEYS IRISH CR

WINE

BAUS PR CHARD ALX

VIGNALE P GRIGIO

MORRO BAY CAB SAUV

FOG HEAD P NOIR

TOAST

LOUIS PERDRIER BRUT

BEER

BUD LT BT 24LS BLUE

HEINEKEN BT 24LS

SAM ADAMS BOSTON LAGER BT 24LS

SAM ADAMS OCTOBERFEST BT 24 LS

SODA & MIXERS

SCHWEPPES TONIC BT

SCHWEPPES CLUB SODA BT

COKE CLASSIC BT

COKE DIET BT

CANADA DRY GINGER ALE BT

SPRITE BT

OCEAN SPRAY CRANBERRY BT

OCEAN SPRAY GRAPEFRUIT BT

TROPICANA ORANGE JUIC

I thought about a keg, but I haven't looked into how much a fancier tap would cost. We have one, but it's the self-serve kind you use at parties in college... and that's not really the theme I'm going for.

@Shelley -- How was your keg set up? What size drink dispensers did you use for the juice/tea? I've found some cute glass ones at Walmart and TJ Maxx, but they're all 2-3 gallons, which seems small.

@Felicia -- I'm hoping they'll just enjoy the open bar without complaining about a lack of selection!

@ Tatyana -- Do you pick what you want from the list? Or will you have all of those?

That's what they recommend for a DIY full open bar, so all of it. They anticipate that you will return about 25% of that but that way you don't run out. We're hoping for 150 people though so I don't know how that compares. I think we're going to downgrade (if I can convince FH) because I don't need people drinking some of the expensive stuff on our dime but keeping the same quantity.

Ya, we were thinking about doing mid-range liquors instead of a premium open bar. Right now the plan is Svedka vodka, New Amsterdam gin, Bacardi rum, and probably Jim Beam for whiskey. I haven't decided on the tequila brand yet.

We'll also have a bottle or two of Grey Goose for FH and his dad.

We had one full size keg with a tap, but the bartender kept it behind the bar and used pitchers to pour in people's glasses instead of directly from the tap.

The juice dispensers were 20 liters which I believe is 5 gallons, they did need to be refilled but we had supplies on hand so no big deal, I found them at Walmart and Costco for about $20 each.

For hard bar, I'm not exactly sure how much we had because FH was in charge of this but I believe we had 2 40oz bottles of each vodka and rum, and one 40oz bottle of gin (other one was returned).

For wine, we had three cases of each red and white...at the end I think we had one bottle if white left and 18 bottles if red left!!

We returned what wasn't used, it was Hot and Sunny at our wedding so people preferred cold bevvies which I guess is why we had so much red wine left (we served beef so we thought more people would drink red!)

Thanks for the details Shelly! I'll talk to FH and see what he thinks about the keg!

If that's how much 90 people drank... then I think I may be seriously overestimating how much people will drink.