The Open Bar Question: How much does it REALLY cost?

Looks about right. We have open beer & wine, which is $18 ppn for the first hour and $3 ppn every hour after that. COL for the bartender, and alcohol tax, on top of it. Our liquor bill is higher than our catering.

If you can do "per-person" instead of "consumption" (if you have mostly adults), that may save you in the end and you'll have a budget cap. Our reception venue charged $19 per person--worth it. Our guests drank a LOT of wine (some beer). You gotta remember, people put their drinks down and forget them. Sometimes waiters clean up half-full glasses. You need to account for some waste too.

I planned a company holiday party and even with a seriously aggressive booze estimate, our bill was $2K MORE...for fewer than 50 guests. Ugh.

My open bar (Beer, House Wine, Premium Liquor) was estimated at $17-23pp. The price if the actual cost was @ $22.00 for 135 would be $2,970.00. (

This is in Connecticut, and our caterer (and I would think most) include soft drinks for free. Also, our caterer said when doing consumption, the final cost actually goes down a little, and you get to keep the unfinished bottles.

Ours will be around $1,350 through our venue for just beer, wine, and soda for 75 people. It's definitely a cost we are willing to eat at that rate. We would probably reconsider how long we would have an open bar if we had more people.

This is a great question and definitely needed to budget. I am doing a consumption bar as well, the manager told me we have 2 beer options (imported & domestic) I believe it's $4 per bottle and about 4 or 5 wine choices (between red & white) at I believe $6 a glass, I may be a little off.

This is how my vendor worded it to me in our initial email:

"We would have to chat about the bar. If you are paying for beer and wine, and we can offer a cash liquor bar, then sodas would be complementary. If you simply do not want ANY liquor, but do want to pay for beer and wine, then we would just do soda service on consumption at 3.00 per soda. If you want beer and wine only but are NOT paying for it, then the added beverage fee , based on 100, would be $381.00 additional."

FH and I are not providing liquor as we are fine with the beer & wine but since we are still a year out we have time do decide about the specific details.

My bar tab is 30 dollars per person this includes free soda so for adults which is 60 people is 1800 plus 500 for Italian soda bar and coffee bar, this does not include bar tender. this is Colorado at one of the high end venues

My venue came with an open bar package. It was listed on our Invoice as $1,000 for 3 different domestic beers, 2 different wines, mixers and 4 hard liquors to choose from. We are inviting 85 people.

If you're able to BYOB, I would definitely do that. We found a local company that you can actually order ahead as many bottles as you want, and any unopened bottles can be returned for a full refund!

That is a typical price. If your booze must come from the venue, be prepared to spend it. This is why we went with more of a DIY place thats just four walls and we bring in the rest. Same amount of people for $2500 in top shelf booze.

Also, keep in mind that people waste booze, they put it down, they go to the bathroom, it spills, so don't count on such a firm number.

Just stick to beer and one, and maybe a signature drink if you wish.

We're having a similar issue... our venue charges $20 x 100 people x 5 hours for an "open bar" which comes out to $10,000 so obviously we are not doing that! We want to do a consumption bar but the drinks are $10 per glass of wine, $9 per beer, and $7 per mixed drink! Honestly their drink prices are ridiculous but we love everything else about this venue so I guess nothing is perfect...

We are having a lunchtime reception, so I'm assuming many people won't have more than 2-3 drinks (and many of our guests don't drink at all) so we're thinking of doing a 2k cap on the consumption bar, and putting out a sign that says "Due to budget constraints, we will be having a limited open bar. Please enjoy 2 drinks on us. After that, additional beverages will be available for purchase."

Unfortunately there's no way to actually monitor it to make sure that people don't have more than 2 drinks, but I'm hoping most people will respect that. We think drink tickets would be tacky so we're not doing that... just hoping enough people will respect it and pay for it themselves if they decide to have more than 2 drinks, and that if a few people don't listen and have more than 2, it'll balance out with the people we don't expect to drink at all.

I wish we could just have an unlimited consumption bar but we just can't budget more than 2k for alcohol!

It looks like you might have double counted. Your calculations show 840 servings of wine AND 840 servings of liquor. Shouldn't the total servings only be a total of 840? That would be over 11 drinks per person and I doubt people will drink nearly that much.

Also, shut the bar 45 minutes to an hour before the reception ends. That will help in holding down the costs, but will also give your guests a bit of time to clear their heads.

View Quoted Comment Would you said it might be cheaper to just pay for a bartender and just get some liquor on the side.

For Pennsylvania, our venue's open bar cost starts at $4000

Our venue is an all inclusive place which has been a huge lifesaver and money saver. They charge $2pp for a limited open bar - we choose this option although they have other options for full open bar at $5pp. The limited open bar is 2 kinds of beer and 2 kinds of wine. We figure that's enough of an option for people. There is also water, tea, coffee, and soft drinks. We are figuring about 65 people so that's $130.

That's pretty standard for alcohol at least around where I am. We are budgeting $50/person (150 rough guest count) for alcohol for the night. And that is providing select beers, select wines, and 3 or 4 cocktails. If they want anything out of what we have determined to be our "house alcohol and drinks" for the night then they will have to pay for them themselves. Once/if we hit $7500, we will have the option to up the limit or change it to a cash bar where everyone will have to pay for their drinks.

What about an open bar just for the cocktail hour? Anything after that they would purchase. That way you’re getting the party started but not breaking the bank.

Wow, some of the prices are really high. Our venue restaurant also asked pretty high price for each drink. So we came to an agreement that we will rent glasses from them and we will do everything rest by ourselves. We still have doubt do we need to take barmen or we just trust our guest not to overdrink. but yeah, our catering company also asked very high prices for open bar

I'm not sure, our venue included a open bar in the price.

Is that an option or do you have to pay additional/extra for that?

It's hard to know exactly what the bar portion will cost because our caterer includes 4 hours of basic bar in our food package, but we wanted to upgrade. The difference between 4 hours basic and 6 hours premium bar is about $15/pp added to our bill.

What you read seems to be a useful calculation. People tend to drink more heavily at the start of the reception or during cocktail hour than later in the evening, so two or three drinks per person then one drink per additional hour sounds like a reasonable estimation. I believe it is better to over-estimate and be prepared than to not have enough for your crowd. Take comfort that not everyone will drink, and those who do select alcoholic drinks may be responsible and only have one or two. You may also wish to learn if your venue would provide water and tea or lemonade for the tables throughout the reception. If there is accessible refreshment, your guests may not be inclined to visit the bar so frequently. Best of luck!