How much are you spending on drinks at the wedding?

We are having a soda bar. Alcohol is going to be a cash bar. It is a lot cheaper and we really don't have many drinkers in our families.

Appetizers/4 Meat Buffet/Cake & Ice Cream/Late Night Burgers, Pizza & Wings/

4 Hours Unlimited Beer, Wine & Pop and Unlimited Champagne for the bridal party.

$41.00 per person

I'm not having alcohol served at mine, but a friend of mine is spending about $15 roughly on each person...her husband is a well known bartender in their city...they're having a semi open bar, certain drinks are paid for the through the groom but others are not...

We are doing a cash bar plus maybe a champagne toast.. alcohol is so expensive, it just doesn't make sense for us to pay for that. if people want it, they can get it, the prices aren't too bad for the venue.

$31 pp for a 4 hour premium open bar! North east Florida area.

I provided the wine for my daughters wedding (from my company) so the cost was pretty low as I paid wholesale. We only did wine and beer. We also were fortunate as my account, where the reception was held, did not charge us a corkage fee. We also live in a state with no sales tax, so no worries there either.

My total tab, for 134 guests, was $500 for beverages.

We kinda got screwed on the alcohol bc a lot of small venues don't do open bars so we are pre ordering wine & paying per drink. I'm coming up with 3-4 signature drinks that use better value liquor (absolute instead of goose) to keep the cost down & we are capping it at $2,500 including tax & gratuity. I'm thinking flask gifts for the BP (which is half the guest list) will save me $ in the long run.

Our venue is $17 a person for beer, wine and top shelf alcohol. And they do shots.

Awwwww yeah.

Its only for 4 hours...we tried to get more but no dice.

I'm doing ticket style. we have some that will drink, some won't, some(like myself! lol), can tip it back!

so, I'm doing 2 tickets per person. cash after that. 4 for the bp and obviously we are paying for our own lol. but the venue is cheaper than most restaurants we've been to, especially considering Houston area. if our finances improve, could turn to open bar for 2 hours. but not right now.

beer and wine only, or mini mixed drinks. looking at $12/pp estimate(or just $8/pp if beer and wine only), so looking at $500 or so for 40 guests. tea coffee and water is included in our catering, soda is $1 each. we will probably put $100 towards soda, as we have 3 teens, so they won't get the alcohol, but have more than just 1 or 2 sodas each. eh, you know what i mean. food and alcohol(tickets) are running us $38/pp,and then ceremony site is about $10/pp, so total $50/pp gives me a $2k budget, and $1500for the rest. works for us, lol!!!

$0 I don't drink and a lot of my family doesn't believe in drinking. People will thank me for save them form my grandmother telling them her dad was a drunk and they had to do without growing up because of it. Her stories last hours. I don't want to deal with people getting out of hand by being completely drunk. So for my wedding it's going to be punch, tea and lemonade.

We are doing limited open bar giving drink tickets to our guest and once they are used we are switching to cash bar

Thanks for sharing ladies! Some great suggestions up there

It looks like there really isn't an "inexpensive" option.....but hey, it's worth it on the big day.

@Cheetah2B I love the idea of a ticket style bar system....that seems so smart, will have to check it out!

Ours is $27.50/pp for full basic bar (includes soft drinks and sparkling water as well). And we are having about 100 guests.

It's for the duration of the reception but it closes at 12:30am (if we choose to go that long. We have our venue until 2am, but will probably stop at around 11pm-12am ish, unless people still want to PARRTTAAYY!! :-))

Your venue may not allow this, but we are buying the beer and wine ourselves (no hard liquor). We spent about $1000 for ~90 adult guests. We also aren't having a bartender but rather will leave the drinks out for guests to grab as they'd like.