alcohol - consumption or per person

I think it's per person per hour. Let me google & try to find it.

When we were figuring ours out, we compared the price of the food with the open bar package to the cost of the food with each drink priced individually. You have to do a lot of guessing as far as how much people will drink if you do a tab bar. Are your guests big drinkers? We ended up deciding to go the open bar route (even though we estimated tab would be a few hundred bucks cheaper) just so we wouldn't be sorry later (the last thing we wanted was to end up paying MORE than the open bar price for a tab bar)! You should find out if sodas are free, or if they would have to be paid for on a tab bar. That's what broke the deal for us....since our venue would have charged 1.50 for every soda consumed, that really racked up our tab bar estimates.

Here is a post that has a website to determine how much alcohol is needed

https://www.weddingwire.com/wedding-forums/found-cool-party-planning-tool-for-how-much-wine-to-buy/25175a0037e2eb86.html

We did per person. We would go bankrupt otherwise. It's the only thing about the wedding FH is really interested in. he wants the premium bar plus he's having them bring in special brands that they don't normally stock. No joke, the contract actually has a liquor rider.

Ya depends on the guests; if you have a party crowd with young people that drink then I'd do per person.

We get to bring in our own liquor, so that works out better for us. My wedding is a young party crowd. If you think your guests will have 3 or more drinks, then go with the per person. I'm sure it will be cheaper.

Well. Before I went nuts on alcohol lol. Our beer and wine was included in the per person. But then I added 37 liquors and it became 6.99 per person. Open bar for the whole 4 hours that the reception is going on.

I agree with Ab Z, a crowd loaded with heavy drinker should be done per/person. If less than 20% of them drink, it would cost too much per person cause you're paying for something that most of your crowd won't touch

As said above, you need to know what your guests like to drink. If they are mostly beer and wine drinkers, you could do a beer and wine package, or b&w plus tab the hard liquor per drink for the few guests who would order cocktails. And , while you didn't ask...skip the signature drinks unless you have an experimental crowd.

Gauge your decision on the amount of serious drinkers you have and what the charge would be for soft drinks.

We have a serious group of drinkers as well. Noone gets out of hand, though. Fortunately, we are doing our own bar, but like my date twin's FH, my FH(and many of our guests) only drink 18 year old single malt scotch(at $60 for a small bottle), and he will only serve top of the line champagne and wine. For a bar, where there are only 60 people, we need 3 1.75 liters of Captain Morgan; 3 1.75 liters of Ketel One Vodka; and 3 1.75 liters of Jack Daniels. I have not even mentioned the gin, Baileys, Kahlua, Chambord, Malibu Rum.... Ugg

Our per person price for open bar all night was a steal, so we went per person. But it definitely pays to compare the prices