Fully hosted vs consumption bar

Cute Picture ~ thanks for changing those awful salt & pepper shakers

There are other ways to limit the cost if it concerns you. You can have a beer and wine open bar, with a signature cocktail.

an old posts to read until you get some one else to respond....

https://www.weddingwire.com/wedding-forums/married-brides-who-took-gamble-on-consumption-bar-option/4bf135ebff8888b7.html

more of Fonsetta's details https://www.weddingwire.com/wedding-forums/takeaways-from-my-wedding-hopefully-this-will-help-others-pics/5842ffbac53dd6bb.html

Hmmmmm - consumption bar would make me very nervous especially for 150 guests - yes it could wind up being cheaper but then again it could wind up costing a boatload more unless they are giving you a flat rate for any mixed drink. A beer could cost $2, a rum & coke $4 and a martini $9 - that's what would make me nervous. If you have a lot of higher end drinkers you're consumption could skyrocket and not based on QTY.

You could set a consumption bar w/ a limit and after it's reached switch to a cash bar. You could also close the bar during dinner and just have beer & wine to help keep the reserve going.

If your estimated bill for the consumption bar is only slightly cheaper than the fully hosted bar, I would opt for the fully hosted bar and not have to worry the whole night about what the bar bill is going to be. If it were going to be significantly cheaper, I'd say go for it, but it would make me really nervous all night that it could wind up being a lot more than the fully hosted bar would have cost.

A consumption bar would also make me nervous. We decided to offer only beer and wine. We are huge wine drinkers and make our own, so wine leftovers aren't a problem as we always have an abundance on hand. Unused kegs can be returned. We found that would help us keep closer track of our costs.

That's tough - you know your guests, who drinks, who doesn't, and who's going to drink themselves silly. I used to plan events for a big hotel, and typically the flat per-person fee turned out more expensive than a consumption bar did (our flat fee was based on 2 drinks/person per hour). Not always, but sometimes it worked out that way, particularly if the group didn't have a bunch of heavy drinkers. If your guests are heavy drinkers, the flat fee *might* be better. But if you have a good mix of drinkers/nondrinkers, I'd probably do what Marie said - set a spending limit on your bar. Once your bar tab hits that limit you set, turn the bars over to cash. That's really the only way to guarantee that your guests don't break your budget.

If you do, just make sure your guests know in advance, and/or see if your venue will accept credit cards in your event for drinks. Guests are usually OK paying for their own drinks as long as they know in advance what to expect.

When we were looking at venues only one offered a consumption bar and it seemed to be slightly cheaper than a fully hosted bar. Like you, we were nervous about how much it could possibly end up being so we went fully hosted. The coordinator at the venue based her calculations on 7 drinks per person (2 drinks during cocktail hour, then one for every hour after) but that didn't seem like enough for some guests and too much for others so we shied away from it. You know your guests best.

I wouldn't do a consumption bar with 150 guests, because you just never know how much people may drink. Is there a way that you can pay a certain amount towards the bar and once it runs out it turns into a cash bar? That may work better.

I'm having the same problem deciding. FH and I went through our entire invite list and picked out those we thought would drink, even if it we thought it might just be 1 or 2. Then we assumed 7 drinks per person at the most expensive drink and it still came out cheaper than the fully hosted. We're a bit older though, so most of our guests are past the "drink to get trashed" stage. So that's why we're leaning towards the consumption. We are also expecting about 150 guests.

We had a consumption bar and the bill was a) much lower than what hosted would have cost, and b) much lower than what we expected. Like Cavan, our coordinator based the calculation on about 7 drinks per person. We had some heavy drinkers, but we also had about half of the guests who either don't drink at all or had one (alcoholic) drink the whole evening. I've got to say I was nervous too, but it turned out OK. We literally took our guest list, estimated how much we think every person will drink and then doubled it. It was still cheaper than hosted. I think that works unless most of your guests are really heavy drinkers.

We are doing a hosted bar. It was going to cost us $7.50 for each person (over 21 of course). We are probably only going to have about 100-120 people who are able to drink and we figured if we did a consumption bar it would be really easy to go over $750 over the course of the night.