How much was your bar tab total ?

I would say that most people would drink 1 drink per hour. Times however long your reception will be. That should give you a good estimate. If it were me, I would use $8-9 per drink as my estimate just to be safe.

Cocktail hour is at 6 then 7-11 .. so 5 hours .
It’s a Sunday night wedding so I’m not sure how many will be staying till the end (older family members )

View Quoted Comment From my math, I would say you would need $4k-5k. That would be 4-5 for 130 guests at $8 a piece. If your crowd is more a beer crowd it could be cheaper, but it could be more too. That would be my best guess for you.

We brought our own alcohol to the venue since they allowed BYOB so we bought all of the alcohol from Costco and Total Wine (liquor, wine, beer) and it was all around $1K.

That is definitely going to be north of $3k, closer to $5-6k. Venue prices really add up when it comes to booze. I'm sure there are people here with the same amount of guests who are closer to $8-10k just for booze. It's all about your guests and how many drinks they put down or don't like after they are made. If the amount is scary consider beer, wine, signature drink.

View Quoted Comment

I Think these prices are really cheap. I go into the city and I expect to pay 12 bucks for a mixed drink, max.

We will have a totally open bar and was told to budget about $25-30 per person for booze.

View Quoted Comment

The prices are similar as what I am used to as well as I live in a downtown area, but usually I'm not paying for 150ish to drink at those prices hahahahah. Can your venue give you an idea of average spend? I just don't want you to be shocked when the $1500 is blown out of the water. I was at a wedding where $1500 was put on a tab and it didn't make it through cocktail hour for about 175 guests, and that was it, then it was cash and I could tell the couple was horrified but they didn't have any cash left.

Your prices are similar to mine - however mine also charges a 22% service fee and then of course state sales tax. So I will pay about 30% on top of what the drink prices are which is substantial. I am mentioning this so you budget for that if your venue also has a service charge. I'll have around 150 adults and I think we'll spend around $5k on alcohol... maybe a bit more.

I had a very small wedding of about 20 people and did open bar. We calculated 1 drink per hour + 1 extra for each person who was of legal age and then multiplied that by the average cost per drink. At the end of the night we were within $20 of that estimate! Of course since you are scaling that number up it'll be different but I think that's a good formula to start with.

View Quoted Comment

This is what we are doing and we estimate about $1K as well.

Well I had 50 guests all of age and our bar tab was 915.00

View Quoted Comment

Yeah, we have 150 guests but 10 are under age (140) and 10-15 don't drink alcohol so that brings my alcohol guests to around 125. I am thinking of adding another 1,000 to be safe: i rather pay upfront and have it paid then have a larger tab on my credit card. when I pay upfront they add the extras at that point.