Four Drinks Per Person - Is it enough? (45 people reception)

That sounds sketchy. Because they are the (hopefully) professionals, they should be providing you with the answers, not asking you something you can’t begin to answer.


Does 4 drinks per person include non alcoholic? Some people will drink more and some will drink less. How long is the reception? Many websites say 2 drinks during cocktail hour and 1 drink per hour after that, but that doesn’t account for nonalcoholic beverages. The bartenders need to tell you how much to buy based on what you know that they drink or don’t. There is no way to guess out of thin air.

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Thank you for your response,

These are all alcoholic beverages, water/ tea will be unlimited (not included in this).

Yes, they did provide an estimate of 4 drinks per person...however, they did let me know there might be a possibility of this running out.

View Quoted Comment In that case, it’s always better to have too much than not enough

I think the usual estimate is two drinks in the first hour then one drink an hour after that for each person. I'd go with 5 drinks for each person. There are online alcohol calculators around too!

We used this drink calculator to figure out how much of beer, wine, and liquor to buy: https://www.evite.com/pages/party/drink-calculator/

If you're planning on just sangria, margaritas, and mojitos, I'd plan on 5 drinks per person, to be safe - if you're buying the alcohol yourselves, that means anything leftover you can keep for your home bar or future parties (or return unopened bottles!).