Drink Budget

Also, the reception will be 5-6 hours and bar will be running for 4 hours!

Price depends on your location and what your guests drink. No two couples will have the same budget even in the same area. Some groups are great with beer/wine only and others don’t drink those at all, preferring mixed drinks. Make sure to have plenty of non alcoholic beverages as well.

A local liquor warehouse (BevMo, Total Wine, etc) has calculators on their websites and Costco has great prices if you are bringing in your own.

We are lucky that the catering includes an open bar. Open bar plus all the food is 100/per person for us.

For our venue, Open bar with for 5 hours is 28 per person. Open bar with top shelf for 5 hours is 32 per person.

Are you hiring a bartender? You might even want to check out mobile bar services… They provide all of the alcohol cups etc. and it takes a lot of the guesswork out as far as ice goes and such and it might factor out to be may be a little more price wise. So it might be worth checking out, unless you already have a set alcohol thing you’re doing

We only bought cognac. but for cocktail hour we had a boba bar so then hmmm i wanna say in general we probably spent like $500

2250 includes bar tender

So haven't married yet but here's what I've accounted for and will run by the bartender before we buy the alcohol:


I looked at my actual guest list, approx 150 people also. I marked guests basically as wine/beer/cocktail drinkers (from my knowledge of them and I think I have it down pretty accurately). Most of the online calculators were giving me too much wine in the estimate so I adjusted with beer or cocktails because our guests are bigger beer and cocktail drinkers. If we weren't doing cocktails then I'd adjust again as needed.
Then I looked at how many hours and how much a reasonable person might drink. Our wedding is in the evening and I want people to have a good time but not get wasted because it's just irresponsible. I know some folks will only have 2 glasses or wine and the champagne toast but I know others could kill a whole a bottle by themselves (or 10 beers in that time). Anyhow, I kind of went person by person and estimated then added a generous cushion.
But again, not married yet so if my bartender thinks I should adjust than I will but I feel pretty good about my estimation right now.

Our bar consists of beer, wine, 2 choices of liquor (probably vodka and whiskey) and a signature cocktail, plus 2 bartenders for $3600. That's roughly $15 pp (200 guest list) and that included gratuity.

Our venue requires that we use one of 2 bar services. They average $14/pp for 4 hours for just beer and wine and $22/pp for liquor+

If you're able to, you can get a licensed bartender for pretty cheap and supply the alcohol yourself - I would have much preferred to do that because it would give us more control of the booze we have, but I have to go with what the venue tells me