Drink Costs ?

My venue provided wine, sodas, tea, and water. We bought additional bottles of cognac. So we just do it where every table got their own bottles of everything. Aha so by the end of the night we had guests take home unopened bottles of soda but that's fine since it's paid for may as well take it

Our venue is completely DIY. The drink packages through our caterer were more than we thought was reasonable, so we're purchasing all of the non-alcoholic drinks for our guests from Costco. Our venue owns a liquor store and it's part of our contract that our alcohol must be purchased from them. Our modified open bar will consist of beer, wine, hard cider, and two signature drinks. Our signature drinks will be a Jack and Coke, and a Blushing Bride (champagne, strawberry vodka, and cranberry juice.) We hired a bartending service who will serve all of the drinks.

So I think our bar package is extremely affordable (Grand Rapids, Michigan). I'm sure in other areas it would be significantly higher. $22 for 5 hours of open bar with glassware, 6 call liquors, 3 wines, 1 domestic draft, 1 craft draft, Coke products, mixers, apple cider, garnishes, bottled water. Minors are $5.

It was only a $3 or $4 difference between the signature drink package and the call package.

We are buying wine (1.5 cases red, 1.5 cases white), beer (4-5 cases of different types, and a case of cider), sodas (cola, diet, sprite, seltzer), and water, and will be making a signature drink (with rum) as well. We also plan to buy a few bottles of something sparkly for guests that wish to toast with us. We will only have 2 underage guests (19&14) and will also have non-alcoholic bubbly if they wish to enjoy. I have been buying cases over time, especially when something goes on sale. For the water we plan to get the smaller bottles and I'm looking to do that for the sodas as well. My number one rule with all of this is I have to be able to drink whatever is left behind so I'm being really picky about the beer because some of it does not sit well with me. This adds more cost for us, but better than a bunch of stuff that will go to waste. This is all for a guest list under 50 people.

We have an all-inclusive venue (hotel) and they provide an hour of open bar in our contract. We decided to do open bar through dinner and the first 30 minutes of the dance floor opening. We are still deciding on if we want just beer and wine or hard alcohol as well. We can choose whether we want to be charged per hour or per bottle opened and we're still deciding on that.

I believe we spent around $690-$720 on modified open bar for 68 guests in SE PA suburb.

We had an open bar and a champagne toast. No signature drinks or tableside wine. There were water pitchers on each table.

We’re doing open beer and wine for 4.5 hours (the max our venue allows) for $33 pp.

Our venue requires a particular caterer, which requires all alcohol and service be provided through their company. For a stationary meat and antipasto station, an international cheese cracker and fruit station and 4 passed apps for cocktail hour, a salad course, choice of three entrees, our wedding cake, 4 hours of open bar, and tables, china, glassware, flatware and linens, its 150-170 per head. We'll pay a little more to upgrade to Chiavari chairs. I think this is decent for a Saturday night, during peak season just outside Harrisburg, PA.

Our venue unfortunately only let us buy drinks through them and they charged $10 per glass of wine plus tax plus a 21% service fee 🤦🏻‍♀️ We couldn’t afford to have a fully open bar so we just served $2200 worth of wine because that’s all we could afford to spare without putting ourselves in debt lol. Since it was a lunch wedding for 100 people (several of whom don’t drink at all) it was very adequate. The $2200 cap was met with about an hour left of the reception at which point everyone who wanted had already gotten a couple drinks on us, and then could just pay for an extra on their own if they really wanted.

I would’ve loved to provide a fully open bar but...... sadly that was a huge downside of our venue. They also misled us at the beginning before we signed the contract to think the bar was more affordable than it was. If we had known that we wouldn’t have been able to provide drinks the whole time then we probably wouldn’t have used them 🙄

My catering company is doing sweet tea, unsweet tea and lemonade for $5 a gallon, water, cheerwine soda bottles for $3 each, red and white wine for $25 per bottle, and about $300 for each 1/2 keg of beer.

Our venue had food an alcohol. We had a full service bar for cocktail hour, through dinner, and through the entire reception. Servers brought drinks during dinner. I can't tell you the cost b/c the dinner and alcohol was all "billed" as one item/ on a per person basis.

I really think it depends on your budget and guest list what you do. People on here have strong opinions that you should host your guests and therefore provide open bar throughout the entire evenings. Others will do cash bar or just wine or dry. I think it's really on a case by case basis.

We are doing the non alcohol package its 3 dollars per person and then having cash bar if people want their own alcoholic drinks its still available.. just open bar is alot of money and were paying for this all on our own. So thats how we decided to handle the bar part lol

On the plus side our head table gets Champaign free for toasting at least and were paying 20 bucks per bottle for whine at the parents table so not bad

Several of my family members have issues with alcohol but we still want them to have a drink if they want one so we are planning on doing mainly soda drinks and a limited amount of signature drinks. Buying our own bottles and hiring a friend to serve the drinks so nobody gets free access. We're also serving tea and coffee with dessert. It'll be like $200 in the end as we're getting dollar bottles for the sodas.

We are providing our own drinks. Sodas, lemonade, maybe tea, beer, wine, various hard liquor and mixers. A basic open bar in other words. Very likely big batches of margaritas.

We are not doing kegs though. It requires a special permit. We will be serving water in pitchers.

I'm doing 2 signature drinks, beer and wine.
Champagne for toast, and non alcoholic at bar.
Table will have tea and water.....