alcohol at wedding

Is your friend a licensed bartender? If so, he or she should be able to give you some advice on what you should provide.

View Quoted Comment She is but not experienced with traveling bar tender. Just worked at a bar for a few months. So not much advice from her other than “those are good ideas I can do whatever you’d like.”

Rule of thumb:
1 Reg / 1 light beer
1 red / 1 white wine1 clear and 1 dark liquor (Vodka / Whiskey - most popular)
40/30/30 is the ratio, but You know your gas best. Are they beer drinkers wine drinkers or liquor drinkers? Whatever is the greater of the three then adjust your ratios accordingly.
Avg 2 drinks per hour per person

*guests (not gas)

Mixers - coke, diet, sprite and ginger ale

View Quoted Comment

I agree with this, this one isn't easily answered as it is very much a 'know your crowd' thing.

We are having 1 red wine, 1 white wine, 1 sparkling one, 1 light beer, 1 full strength beer, and 3 spirits (vodka, scotch and rum). In my culture, drinking is HUGE at weddings so we are calculating 3-4 individual drinks/per person/per hour.

If unsure, always go with more alcohol. It is much better to have more alcohol on hand (any excess to be collected later and taken home by the couple) than to have the bar run dry half way through.

Measuring out 1.5 oz shots for 80 proof liquor, standard, will make 39 drinks from a 1.75 liter bottle. 3 drinks each for 13 people. ... Liquor prices vary greatly by state and tax rate. Buy near big holidays, and most 1.75 bottles will have at least 1 major brand $2-4 off.
Here in NH:
If this $40 bottle does 39 shots, then each drink has $1.05 liquor, plus mixer.
If at least one of your liquors, vodka, or Rum, is a middle shelf popular type,
That would be 39 drinks for $20. 53 cents forthe liquor in the drink. Try to serve only 1 premium brand like Jack Black, or all middle shelf, 1.75 ltr bottles for anything where you want 20 or more drinks. The price difference is worth having some leftovers.Your local prices , you have to check.

Here, we can NOT buy a beer, equal liquor to a shot, for 53cents. But mixers, those you better get on sale.

I would definitely think about like 2 or three signature drinks that way you don’t spend too much of mixers and different types of alcohol , I am also just having 3 signature drinks no beer or wine

It's really a know your crowd type thing that only you can answer. Are they beer and wine drinkers only? Do they prefer mixed drinks? A Bevmo type store can tell you how much to buy based on your count but only a vote among your guests can tell what they prefer.

A friend of mine did beer and wine. For wine she just bought a bunch of cases, and for wine she ordered a keg (allowable by the venue) and had the bartender pour it. She said it didn’t cost too too much.


Thinking the same for my wedding in September!
Congrats

I think it's a know your crowd type of thing. That being said, if you get your alcohol from a place like Costco, you may be able to return the unopened bottles (not sure if they're still doing this with Covid). We returned a bunch of wine and beer from our rehearsal dinner that was unopened, because we overbought just in case!

I'll definitely choose wine over a beer at weddings, I think most people prefer wine on such occasions too.

We provided our own alcohol and actually took the time to go through our guestlist to guess what each person was likely to drink (identified bourbon loving uncles, beer loving friends, Chardonnay drinkers etc)— obviously we couldn’t know what everyone would choose day of, but it helped us get a sense of what people would like. One problem with only a couple pre-mixed options to save money is it ends up a waste if its not something a lot of your guests are into (for example almost no rum was consumed at our wedding so if we had made a big batch of rum and coke I worry it would’ve been thrown out). To me, this makes the beer and wine only option more appealing because with different beers and wines available, you may be able to appeal to a wider audience (especially if you do like a white and a red for wines and a dark and a light for beers).


A couple things we did was choose things we liked, so we wouldn’t be upset to have leftovers. We also shopped around to find liquor stores where we could return unopened bottles (this varies by state), and we were able to over buy liquor and wine and return what we didn’t use and got some money back .(..this is also a disadvantage to pre-mixing. We opened bottles as we went , so only used what was ordered specifically ). Also we bought wines by the case so we were able to get a discount there as well.
In my experience when couples are trying to be frugal, beer and wine only has been the more common option. The last wedding I went to was beer , wine and only 2 liquors (I think a whiskey and a rum or something — the groom’s gave and the bride’s fave), so almost like signature cocktails but in this case it was signature liquors 🤣. Seemed to really work out quite well for them!

Https://www.evite.com/pages/party/drink-calculator


This link takes you to evite’s drink calculator. Super helpful!