How much alcohol?

There is nothing worse than a party that ran out of alcohol.

You can always buy alcohol and return the ones you didn't open. Just have to make sure that the caterers don't open like 3 bottles of the same stuff at the same time and end up with 3 1/2 bottles.

When we got married we bought all our alcohol from Costco and gave it to the venue we were having the reception at. At the end of the night they gave us what was left unopened and we just returned them back to Costco. This was in Mexico.

If they can do returns there, I'm sure you'll have no issues here in the US.

You can use this drink calculator:

http://www.evite.com/pages/party/drink-calculator.jsp

I spent a lot of time on this and talked with several people and was told that during an average ceremony, an average person will have about 3 drinks. So, if you plan on 4 drinks per person you should be safe. I thought it sounded low but once I figured everything based on that, it looked right. Hope this helps.

I had approximately 120 people at my wedding, but only like a 1/3 of them drank. We went through 2 kegs and 15 bottles of wine. The wine went a lot quicker than I thought and probably could have used a few more. A few people went to the bar in the hotel and got mixed drinks. Do you have an alcohol supplier at the reception location? The hotel I had mine at asked their supplier what they recommended and this is what they said. And it was perfect. They filled 2 pitchers with beer at the end of the night to take to the after party room - that's all that was left!

I would just check with the stores your looking at buying it from and ask them if they will return any unopend bottles (I know where I live there are quite a few warehouses that will do that). That way plan on everyone having about 3 drinks more then the average to insure you have enough the day off and return anything not used.

I use what noel put, drink calculator works everytime

A web site I find useful for calculating how much alcohol to buy for a wedding is:

The Wedding Alcohol Calculator