Alcohol

Are you purchasing your own alcohol or is your venue providing it?

The general rule is to assume 2 drinks per guest for cocktail hour, and 1 drink per guest each hour after until the end of the reception. So if you're having a four hour reception, that would be 5 drinks per person or 325 drinks total. A bottle of wine is about 5 drinks, so if you do 60% of 325 that would be 195 drinks or 39 bottles of wine and 140 bottles/cans of beer. Depending on what you're buying, the price would vary

View Quoted Comment I am purchasing the alcohol

View Quoted Comment Thank you so much Amber. That actually helped a lot. Now I just need to figure out an average price haha

Check out BevMo they have a calculator that can help you determine cost & how much you should buy! Our wedding will be more hard liquor (lol, we're whiskey people) then wine & beer but when we looked it said to expect to pay roughly $25/bottle of wine & about $10/6 pack of beer [obvisouly if you buy larger packs or kegs you'll save more money]

For average price on wine i'd look up the brand you want online, see how much it is, and what it says about how many servings it has, and then you'll get a basic idea.

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You're welcome! For our alcohol, I think we're doing $5 bottles of Barefoot Wine and three different kinds of bottled beers that average out at about $20 per 24 pack

View Quoted Comment Okay then I agree with the previous posters comment about how much to buy! As far as price that can vary wildly by what you purchase. Bud light and two buck chuck will be a lot cheaper than a craft beer and a local wine. I would look at different stores to compare prices and taste test some things to figure out what you like best!

I scoured sales and ended up buying practically all our wine and champagne at Wine Depot. One of my favorite reds in 19 Crimes which I picked up for $8 a bottle. I grabbed two different kinds of white for about $6 each and our champagne was the same.

Any time I’ve needed to buy alcohol for an event, I’ve just asked the manager of the liquor store what I should get. They’ve never steered me wrong. You could also do a quick google search on how much you’ll need. The cost is going to vary depending on what you’re buying. For example, buying the cheapest wine available for my family would be a waste because they wouldn’t drink it. So while it would be cheaper, it would be a bad idea. So I would choose to buy something that’s not the cheapest type, but would be more enjoyable to my guests. Beer could go the same way, I just used wine as an example because I don’t drink beer.