How much alcohol do people drink in an open bar?

In weddings past, when there was an open bar- I would drink till the party was shut down. Prob 2-3 glasses of wine, and 6-8 cocktails and of course endless amounts of champagne. But that's just me. My FH, prob just a bourbon and a beer and that's it.

I've heard the average to be about 2 drinks per person per hour. Hope that helps.

Oooh that is good to know...except sadly my venue offer hard liquor by the bottle

Check out some online tools that will calculate this for you. Also consider if your crowd is heavy/normal/light drinkers and adjust accordingly.

Try buying your booze from a place that will allow you to return any unopened bottles. This can be a big budget help.

One of the set backs with open bar is people waste drinks a lot. Instead of keeping track of their drink, or just topping it up with ice, they just go get another.

Found this:

How much alcohol will I need? On average figure about 2 drinks per person per hour.  A four hour reception for 150 adult guests would require about 1200 drinks to be served.  However, the number of drinkers vs. non-drinkers in attendance, age of the group, time of day, time of year, weather conditions, indoor vs. outdoor events, type of food being served, serving size of the glass, and location of the bar are factors that need to be considered in planning an event.

A lot. For adults that are old enough to drink, id say 3-4 drinks an hour.

ETA: after reading the other comments, I sound like an alcoholic. I'm basing it off of what happened at my wedding. We went through about $1000 an hour for about 65 adults. And not all of them were drinking.

Geez. I thought I was a drinker lol but I couldn't keep up with some of these numbers. I'd say on average 1 drink per person/hour. Maybe 2 max. Though if I had 8 drinks in four hours I'd prob be dead.

Per person I'd say one Caesar ( yum)

3 glasses of wine with diner

and three cocktail drinks an hour per person max.

Some will drink more others less...

If you mentioned Ceasars... are you in Canada? If so, I know that the LCBO and other shops in Ontario allow returns of unopened bottles. Because of the monopoly they know that you got it there and how much it would have been. This way whatever you get that doesn't get used you can return for a refund, so don't worry about buying too much!

Your numbers should also somewhat inflate if you have servers clearing half-drunk drinks. I had half of 3 drinks at my own wedding. people would take them from me to dance, set them down, they'd be cleared, I'd get another. I finally gave up and got water...and then they took my water!! So someone might only drink 1-2 drinks an hour in reality...but 3-4 drinks to get that amount of alcohol.

If you're doing a BBQ or something with no servers/catering staff, this probably wont be a problem.