Alcohol at the reception

Where is your reception being held? Some places require that you hire a bartender if you are serving any type of alcohol. Our venue offers us 4 hrs of open bar. We are doing 1 hr between ceremony and reception and then 3 hrs after dinner. 1-2 hrs doesn't seem very long. If doing a cash bar you may want to consider providing non-alcoholic drinks and maybe beer and if guests want anything else then they can pay for it.

For an open bar you usually just pay a flat rate per person.

You could provide everyone with 3 tickets for 3 free drinks, then afterward they will pay for their additional drinks. That's what we originally wanted to do, but FIL's nixed the idea and said they'd pay for the open bar.

We're doing what Amanda R. mentions--open bar until the $ runs out, then I don't care what happens, LOL. Sodas, etc. are also included in that dollar amount--anything but water, actually. We're only doing beer, wine, champagne, and non-alcoholic drinks--FH didn't feel that comfortable with a full bar.

We are doing open bar and our venue is providing the bartender. our price is included to our dinner per person price....however, angie g: i like that idea with the tickets.

I'm doing an open bar also. I decided to set a price limit and let em have at it! Once it reaches the limit it'll become a cash bar. I was considering choosing what drinks I want served but I think we're not going to do that since our guest list is made up of such a diverse group of ppl. I'm def having a signature drink tho. Between the signature drink, wine, champagne, and beer, nothing else will really be consumed other than soda. All of my fem friends are in on coming up with the signature drink and all of the guys mainly drink beer :-) According to the catering manager at the hotel, my $1,000 alcohol budget will be way too much for my 66 guests lol. o well

I'm doing beer and wine only for the whole night. My bartenders are provided by my caterer.... And my bar package comes with soft drmks and everything else I could need... Open bar isn't really necessary unless you have people who only drink those kind of drinks... It was way too much for me!

On the venue we are almost 100% certain we are going with we have restrictions on what we can serve. Only wines and champane. If we go nonachoholic we can skip liability insurance.

I wouldn't do a cash bar. But you can have an open bar for half of your reception then maybe do the last two hrs as a cash bar. I have been to a wedding like that. And it worked out great.

My friends had an open bar up to $600 and never even came close to it with their 75 guests. Try as I did to help them out, I just couldn't make a big enough dent! So I was considering doing this with just $250 so people could have wine with their meal but my venue charges so much for the service and doesn't allow outsiders! Oh well, as we've been discussing in another thread I plan to sneak some in.

We are having serve yourself beer and wine as well as non alcohlic beverages and then serving a his and hers signature drink. When its gone its gone

We are doing an open bar for our reception, I don't feel right making our guests pay for anything. I want them to enjoy themselves! Any venue that has a liquor license when it comes to over serving a guest they are the ones liable, so they know how to cut off people when they have had too much. We don't have friends or family that would get over the top drunk and make a scene so I am not concerned anyway If you have a large family of alcoholics and recovering alcoholics than I can understand having second thoughts about an open bar, but I think you can allow your adult guests to make their own decisions about if they would like to enjoy a drink or not