How many drinks at reception? (200 guests)

There are a lot of drink calculators online but i always find they over estimate [however that's better than having less there].

i want to think that prepping 2-3 of each for every guest makes sense. but again, that's not fool proof because some people may not drink certain things and some may drink more of one thing than another.

I think it really depends on how heavy of drinkers your guests are. I don't drink so I would want either water or lemonade. I also I wouldn't buy anything yet because unfortunately if the way things are 200 people might not be allowed or even want to attend a reception right now.

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Melle- I have looked at so many drink calculators and its hard because most of them do account for both alcoholic/non alcoholic drinks. I am scared to not have enough.

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I dont drink either, so i think that is why i am having a hard time guessing how much people drink. But very true, this is my second time planning our reception, **sigh**

View Quoted Comment I would wait to see how many people rsvp that they will be attending then based on that number you could use an online calculator like the previous poser recommended. It also might be nice to offer tea and lemonade in addition to water and soda. I don't drink alcohol or soda so I would like something other than water.

There are two ways to determine if you are calculating too much or under - I've always believed and witnessed that depending on how many hours you are having an open bar calculate 2-3 drinks per person /per hour. So for 2 hours you figure it's about 5 drinks per person.

If they are 'drinkers" - average on the high.

Only you know your guests, what do they prefer more? Beer or Wine?

We had so many drinks left over! Both alcoholic and nonalcoholic.
Most calculators suggest 2 drinks for the 1st hr and then 1 every hour there after. So, I’d make sure you have about 7 drinks per person.
I made a list of all our guests, we only had 60 people, and indicated whether the were beer, wine, or nonalcoholic. And then that’s how I determined how much to buy. I think we did 12 bottles of wine (2 red and 2 white, 3 large bottles of each) and then we did 4 types of beer. I think we did 2 12 packs of each. Plus lemonade, water, diet and regular coke, Champaign for the toast, and 2 different cocktails during cocktail hr. Oh and juice boxes for the kids during cocktail hr.

We had our reception from 530-10 and 135 guests (2 kids and probably 20-30 non-drinkers). We served about 600 alcoholic beverages during the reception.

3 alcoholic beverages per person and 2 soft drinks per person. It will even out since some won't drink alcohol and vice versa. In 5 hours people should not be consuming more than 4 alcoholic beverages. Most will stop at 2-3.

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Our guest lean more toward the beer then wine. Thank you for your advice

Here is our invoice from the place supplying our alcohol. We're doing bud, bud light, and summer shandy, captain Morgan and coke, cranberry juice and Tito's vodka, plus coke, diet coke, sprite, some ginger ale. This is for a reception of 150-180 people (we originally invited 200).

Oh yeah, and we have a red and white wine. Let me know if the pic is blurry for you and I can try to just type it in if you want.

Here, this may be easier. Sorry.

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It is blurry how many total cases of beer/total pop did you order? that will be so helpful, thank you!!

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That is a good idea with sorting out the list of people we are inviting. thank you for your help

View Quoted Comment I uploaded a better pic I think but we did 10 cases of summer shandy (12 packs), 8 cases of bud light (24 packs), 4 cases of Budweiser (24 packs), and we got 8 2-liters of coke and we'll be changing it to you 8 2-liters of each soda/pop (Coke, spite, and diet coke), 2 2-liters of Canada Dry, 5 bottles of cranberry juice and 12 bottles of each wine.

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Oh my gosh, thank you sooo much that really helps. Your head counts seem very similar to ours so that is a good ball park idea for counts.

View Quoted Comment No problem! The company we're using is known for doing all of the weddings in town and they're really good at determining how much alcohol you need. He was even able to accurately guess how many people would RSVP to our wedding! Thankfully, they'll also let us return anything that is unopened, too. I was stressing when we were just going to do the alcohol ourselves lol

View Quoted Comment That is so helpful, I am stressing because we are doing the food and everything ourselves lol I regret not paying someone but we’re saving so much money. Last question, how long was/is your reception for?

View Quoted Comment Our reception including cocktail hour is from 5pm-11pm