Consumption bar totals.....

Bumping

A friend of mine got married in March of last year and did consumption... she had about 80 guests and average drink cost was about $6-8 and her totally was right around $3000. From what I've heard from others, however, that it low

Yeah I'm worried. We have 160 but our drinks are $5 and bottles of wine $23. So according to the equation that puts me at 6500. But I know not even guest will have 8 drinks. Hopefully we can keep it under 5000.

I'll vomit if we get hit w/6K in booze!?!?! haha My venue coordinator said that you take your total # of guests multiply by $9 (beer and wine) or $12 (full bar) and that's the average total. That seemed very low. I'll have between 90-95 guests so w that rationale the tab would be only about 1K (beer and wine) seemed too good to be true! lol I even asked, are you sure I dont multiply $9 per guest per hour...she said no and that this would give the average as not all would drink. So I thought I would come here for some REAL #'s from you all.

All depends on how many drinkers and how heavy. I drink but even then I can barely get 6 down at a 7 hr wedding. I need my water and other things too.

We are doing consumption and about 50% of our guests are not drinkers. We are estimating about $3500 all in (tax and tip) for beer/wine only. We have about 100 guests and about 45 reg drinkers. Avg price of beer is about $6-$8 and wine is cheapest $42/bottle so about $8 a glass.

I had 65 guests (around 80 if you count vendors like photographer and musicians and coordinator etc) and our consumption bar ended up around $1000. Side note: We did not have a dancing/party atmosphere and ended the wedding around 10:30-11pm. It was a cocktail party vibe.

Here's our bill, for bar, food and drinks.

I know right?? I legit said "you mean multiply each guest at one drink per hour" and she said no just take total of guests x $9 or $12 and that will give you your average....I think I may be calling back to RE clarify....although this was the head of the events dept I was talking to! lol

We average drinks to be $7 (full bar). 5 drinks a person will be $1750 plus tax and gratuity. We have wine on tables during dinner which is included in our per person price.

Following

@ Leanne, how many guests?

I'm also worried about this. We're in pretty much the same boat. 90 ish guests and no per person open bar pricing. And we have some decent drinkers in our crowd.

I'm pretty terrified about what kind of bill we'll be hit with at the end of the night. Following!

BTW: if you are concerned about the budget. just offer beer and wine and have the selection pre-selected ahead of time so only certain wines can be ordered etc.

That is what we are doing.

@ VC - yes we most likely doing to have to offer beer and wine (possibly a sig drink) I'm waiting for the selections now from coordinator and depending on variance in pricing thats a great idea to pre-select options!

I should add....we will have a DJ, and our reception is from 4-9p so not too late but enough time to do some serious damage! lol

Ours is consumption too and I'm a little worried lol. We have a lot of guests who can really pound the beers down.

Two more things to ask:

1. How they track it, if it's a tally sheet, on a register, or just empty bottles at the end. My dad went to a wedding recently that was consumption-based and he said he felt so guilty each time he got a drink and they hit the button on the register because it was obviously adding to the tab.

2. How they handle bussing. I mention this because we were at a wedding recently and every time I grabbed my phone to take a picture and turned away for a moment, or set down a drink to dance for a song and came back, my 90% full glass disappeared and I'd have to go get a new one. I hope it wasn't consumption-based!

We are looking at about 135 guests. I am planning on a 4000 tab with my open bar not including tip

In other venues we saw, open bar was only like 4-5 hrs and would cost about 7 drinks per person. Since only half of our guests drinks, we did not think it would be of value anyways.

We had about 80 people. I would estimate that approximately 1/3 were non-drinkers, 1/3 were casual drinkers, and 1/3 were big drinkers. Our tab was less than $2000 including tip here in the MA suburbs.

Estimate HIGHER.. people can often take advantage if the bar is open -- trying drinks they never would have before and not finishing them (and getting another right away), letting the busser take half-full drinks that the ice has melted in, etc. People that have never hosted a wedding or event with open bar think that open bar means FREE and just drink drink drink!

My venue offered to let us put a limit and then they would let us know when we were approaching it, for example if we said $2000 max, they would come by when we were getting close to that and ask if we wanted to extend or not, that way we couldn't be completely shocked at the end of the night with a massive bill.

Another option would be to say no shots, just mixed drinks (mixed drinks take longer to consume! And drunk people just drink more haha). I think its better to assume everyone will have at least two or 3 drinks (cocktail hour, dinner, dancing). Some may have less, some may have more, but that may give a better average.