Hosted Bar-how much to put towards the bill?

Yeah, it probably will be pretty awkward to announce a cash bar half way through your reception. I don't know how to go about that. But as far as figuring out your budget, I would use the per person cost from the other venues, multiple times 70 guests, and use that as your number.

View Quoted Comment Thank you for validating that for me! It is awkward. I don’t know why they do it that way. That is a good idea to use the per person cost from other venues.

Be aware that people will not drink when they have to open their own wallets. Pay what you can afford and serve only free beverages after that. If that means mocktails, soft drinks, coffee, that's what you offer.
Are the per person venues not an option?

I would suggest serving beer and wine only. That will cut down your cost significantly. A big issue with having an open bar, then turning it to a cash bar, is people will over consume faster and take multiple drinks at one time while the bar is still open. If you can put $1,000 towards a open beer and wine bar for the whole night... I would!

I once went to a wedding that switched to a cash bar after they reached their max on the tab— they didn’t even announce it. It literally switched in the middle of cocktail hour and guests were shocked that they were having to pay for their drink.


We went to a “Welcome Drinks” event for a wedding a few weeks ago, and the bride and groom announced on the invite that they would pay for the first round of drinks (I’m not sure how they kept tabs of this, I’m assuming the bartenders told them when they hit a certain amount of drinks. So let’s say they expected 80 people to come, once the tab hits 80, they closed it out.). So maybe you can do something similar?
You can also drink tickets if you want.
Would you be opposed to only doing beer and wine? That will stretch your dollar a bit more and could possibly cover the tab so that your guests actually don’t need to pay.

View Quoted Comment Thank you for that advice. I agree that people are inclined to drink less when they have to open their own wallets. That’s another reason I’m not willing to just leave an open tab on my card. They’ll drink until they’ve doubled our wedding cost lol the per person venues have just had terrible customer service. Some aren’t open or promptly responding due to Covid. But this venue is all inclusive as far as tables, chairs, linens, food, bartender, set up/break down and coordination. It’s also so beautiful that I don’t have to spend on drapery and uplighting. The only thing I am struggling with is this bar situation.

View Quoted Comment I considered this too. I definitely don’t want to stress about the cost of things all night.

View Quoted Comment Most blank slate venues that allow outside caterers...the high rated catering companies either have their own bartender or they can refer you to a specialty company which charge per person whether it's beer, tequila or Sprite...if that's an option. It depends on what you're willing to spend.

View Quoted Comment Drink tickets sound like a viable option. I never thought of that. One look at Pinterest tells me it’s been done before. I think with that I’d be able to set a dollar amount and then give everyone a few drinks on us. We definitely don’t anyone shocked when they have to pay for their own drinks. But also, I hope nobody feels entitled to anything on our wedding day.

View Quoted Comment Yeah, our Welcome Dinner venue offered us this option since they didn’t offer an open bar. We opted out of it and just kept our tab open at a set amount ($3000) but asked the bartenders/coordinator to let my MIL (my in-laws were paying for it) know if we were getting close to it so she can decide if she needed to up it or if it was close enough to the night’s end to stop the drinks. We actually ended up spending less than $2000 on drinks for around 80-90 people. It was beer and wine only since they didn’t offer hard liquor. Wine was around $10-12/glass and beer was around $7-10/glass I believe. The event was around 3 hours.

That can be the problem with "all inclusive" places is you usually have the cost catching up with you somewhere along the way. I would advise against this, yes it will be awkward and rub some guests the wrong way. If you can stick to beer and wine I think that's a great compromise.

View Quoted Comment Yes that makes sense. 80 people is our max. Our event time is 6 hours for ceremony and reception (access to bridal suite and grooms suite to get ready 4 hours prior). We don’t plan on having a long ceremony. So I’m guessing about an hour for the ceremony. Then there will be a cocktail hour with appetizers and then the actual reception. I thought a keg was a great option until I saw the price and realized I don’t want to pay that for just one type of beer.

Agree with much said above, switching to a cash bar is awkward. I’ve been to non-weddings that did this and the people who know about the swap will grab extra drinks early (potentially wasting them) and the people who don’t will be really mad when the bartender suddenly asks for a credit card.
Much better to offer drinks where the bar can be open all night (ie. the limit you set will most likely cover the cost).
I think you should return to the keg idea. Yes it limits options, but at $3 domestic and $3.7 imported you are getting literally double the drinks for your money. One type of free beer is preferable to 7$ choices.

View Quoted Comment I can’t put up enough money to cover the cost of an open bar.

I agree that a keg is ideal. But it sounds like they must only order the largest keg size they have at that price. I’m not sure if we’d go through it all and then it’d go to waste.

I think serving beer and wine would be your best bet. Your money will go a lot further that way.

We’re in a very similar situation. Before we cut our list down, we were going to put $2000 towards the bar tab and then switch to cash bar. But because of covid, we cut the list down & our reception is now lasting right around 3.5 hours during the day time. The way we kind of determined how much $$ to set aside was to go down our guest list & think about how heavy/light of a drinker they were and “assumed” that everyone would drink the most expensive drink (which was $7 liquor). We figured if every single guest drank only liquor, everyone would be able to have 7 drinks before the bar tab ran out. And we knew that was a pretty high number of drinks, because we didn’t want to put too low of an amount towards the tab and have people need to pay for more than 1-2 drinks. I hope that makes sense 😂

That does make a lot of sense! We have a lot of heavy drinkers on our list as well. I can appreciate the methodology you used to figure that out. Very thorough!


Unfortunately we couldn’t cover the cost of each of our guests to have 7 drinks. We’re both fresh out of grad school. We’re working towards buying a house and we want to start a family. With all this and student debt in mind lol we have to keep costs down. We just couldn’t justify going into debt for the sake of others at our wedding. I think we’ll cover the cost of two drinks and manage it via drink tickets.

For me, the thought of changing a bar to a cash bar in the middle of the reception (or once what you have prepaid for has been met), is a little strange, but I have been to weddings where this was done and they mentioned it on an insert they included with their invitations. One of the weddings I went to that were like this had it switch over at 9pm, but I think for that wedding they had a card on file that was charged for all of the drinks up to 9pm, then they switched to cash. For my wedding my husband and I had a different situation from yours as we were able to stock the bar ourselves and hire our own bartender. We got all of our liquor, beer and wine from Total wine and only spent around $250 on everything after all of the discounts we got from buying in bulk and returns we made after the wedding of un-open bottles we did not want.

With your situation, I think it might be best to serve beer and wine only. This would cut costs for you, and once what you've prepaid for is out, you can switch over to free beverages your venue offers like water and/or soft drinks.

View Quoted Comment I was hoping to find a venue that would allow us to bring outside alcohol in. Unfortunately the only venues that I found to allow that here are just awful. They look like large corporate offices. And included really nothing but an awfully expensive venue price.


Beer and wine is cheaper but I’d still really feel cheap doing that. Most people I’m around don’t drink wine. Some drink beer but wouldn’t choose it at a wedding due to not wanting bloating.