How to stock the open bar?

Purchasing all required items for a full bar terrifies me... So I don't have much help to offer.

With that said- I purchase all my liquor from Costco. I can personally vouch for the Kirkland brand vodka, silver tequila and gin. I don't drink dark alcohol.

We are sticking to beer, wine, champagne, vodka and a ton of mixers. Wegman's wine is great and I agree Kirkland Vodka is amazing as well. Keep it simple.

On our bars this is what is on them, well I will list what is on our house bar: Svedka, beefeaters, bacardi, captain morgan, jim beam, seagrams 7, dewars and cuervo.....wine will have: chard, pinot grigio, sauv blanc, pinot noir, cab, and a red blend....oh yes, reisling and white zin. We offer about 15 beers on the house bar.

Stick to basics. Like vodka, rum and maybe a bourbon. Smirnoff vodka has a ton of different flavors. So you could get a variety of that. I would stick to a clear rum like Bacardi. And maybe Jack Daniels for the bourbon. Oh and Cuervo Gold for the margaritas. Don't forget salt for those. They have found containers. And add a lighter beer too. Like Bud light or miller lite. Your beer list is good but they are all heavy flavored.

Depends on what you're looking for, but keep it simple and get more than you think you need. Do you live in a state where you can return unopened bottles? We are planning on doing that but I doubt we will have much left over!

To directly contradict what I just said about being simple, also make it fit what you/your guests like to drink. We are having a fall Kentucky wedding and are both huge bourbon drinkers. A lot of our guests are first time visitors to KY and many are doing bourbon tours while they are in town. To play off that, we are having 4 different types of our favorite bourbon (for the record.... Buffalo Trace, Four Roses, Woodford Reserve, and Bookers).

As for the other liquors: Lots of vodka. People love their vodka. Costco brand tequila because I'm not about that life. Typical mid-top shelf whiskey, gin, and rum.

We are having bud light for people like my father, corona, and 2 craft beer options. 2 reds and 2 whites.

Also if your are sourcing bar don't forget to make sure someone (you, vendor, or caterer) has ice covered!

We're really picky about beer and liquor, so we've got:

Beer: Local craft beers; a California Common, Oktoberfest, porter, and then a cheap light lager

Wine: 4 varieties (2 white, 2 red) plus sparkling wine - all from Trader Joe's

Liquor: Cruzan rum, Tito's vodka, Bulleit bourbon, gin, and a little bit of tequila; also vermouth (my parents want Manhattans)

Mixers: soda (Coke, Diet Coke, Ginger Ale), tonic, seltzer, orange juice, cranberry juice

Garnishes: olives, cherries, bitters, and caterer is providing lemons & limes

Think about what your guests are likely to drink. We know that my family will hit the rum hard, our friends will go for the vodka, and the rest will be a mix. I'd only do sour or margarita mix if that's something you really want, otherwise it's fine to stick to standard mixed drinks.

Beyond that, there's tons of calculators you can find online that will show you how to do the proportions. The standard calculation is 1 drink per guest per hour (some will drink more, some will drink less). Also, most stores will take back anything unopened.

For beer I'd add something like Budweiser/Bud light. Heinken and Octoberfest can be heavy/strong tasting. I feel as though Bud and Bud Light are safe choices that many people will go to.

FH recently drove over to Delaware (from NY) so we could do our alcohol purchase tax free. I would guess it saved us several hundred dollars. It helps that one of his GM lives there so it was also a nice trip for him to see his friend, AND they will let us bring back anything unopened (except the beer) which is good.

We're not sure what we're doing with 99% of this wedding stuff, but we ARE sure we want people to have an amazing time and what better way than to offer them an excellent bar selection? It helps that our caterer is taking care of all mixers, glasses, ice, garnishes, etc. so we could focus solely on the alcohol.

We ended up with:

Liquor:

Hendricks

Grey Goose

Jameson

Hornitas Anejo

Dogfish Head Honey Rum

Beer:

Bud Light, Miller Light, Corona, Heineken, Fat Tire, Stella, Brooklyn Pumpkin

Ballast Point Manta Ray

Q Ginger Beer (for Moscow Mules)

Wines, etc.:

Bourbon Barrel Red Blend

Côtes?du?Rhône Villages Signargues (Red Blend)

Champagne

Rose (can't remember the label)

Various Whites (I get loads of white wine gifted to me at work.)

And our whisky list (we are scotch people):

Johnny Walker Blue

Octomore 6.1 Scotish Barley

Balvenie Founders Reserve

Balvenie Double Wood

Balvenie Single Barrel

Cadenhead Benriach Cask Strength

Benriach Peated PX Sherry 1984

Laphroaig PX Triple Matured

Bowmore Vault Edition First Release

Balvenie Portwood

Laphroaig Cadeiras Quarter Cask Strength

We also have a shit ton of liquor at home just from being in our 30s and having people over who bring stuff and don't take it when they leave. Some may end up at the wedding bar.

Not much to add but for the wines, I don't know of anyone with riesling as their first choice for whites. I'd say you're safer with a pinot grigio or a sav blanc instead.

We are also buying all the alcohol for our wedding (open bar yay)

We are keeping it simple:

Beer (keg from a local brewery) and bottles (dos XX's, Victoria and Modelo) Mexican beer bc we are getting married in Mexico.

Bottles of Tequila (Casadores) and whisky (Bucanans)

And if there are any extra bottles we can keep them for our personal bar

If you buy from Costco you can probably return unused stuff. I'd look for common liquors like jack daniels, smirnoff, etc. They aren't high end, but they also aren't jet fuel.

Find a place that lets you return unused liquor (usually wholesale) and over buy. We have a place here in KY called party town that lets you return anything not used. ORRRR just get a cert bartender and let them handle all that. I know its more expensive, but I've heard horror stories about having a self serve bar with liquor.

BTW, I second going to Delaware to purchase your alcohol. Found a good spot right off of I-95 in Wilmington, really reasonable and good selection

Skip the Killian's you're going to have a lot of them left over.

Sam Adams Octoberfest and Killian's Irish Red are kind of similar. I'd switch one of them out for a different style of beer. Maybe an IPA?

Our bartender sent us a list and we went to Costco.

We're having 60 people for 3 hours. So we should be good.

@faluf im in DE !!! And at the top so you probably were close to me lol

We placed our order last week. We have about 190 people. Im still freaking out that we dont have enough. Both us and our family and friends are big drinkers. Worst case, we can have someone run to the LQ for us if things get low. Im not a beer drinker so forgive me if i get them wrong

We got 2 kegs of miller light, 4 cases of corona , 3 cases of heinken, 3 cases if an IPA i forget what he picked and a couple cases of something else?

Plenty of moonshine

4 handles of vodka

3 handles of jack

3 handes of captain

3 handles of james

2 large bottles of patron

2 bottles of rumple ( yuck)

Couple of bottles of wine

And it looks like i will be ordering my mixers through sams club. They have 35 pack cans of coke etc for $9.98 and water cheap too.

We are selecting our own liquor too...through a liquor store.

We are going just vodka and whiskey for liquor.

Beer - Michelob Ultra, Stella and Sam Octoberfest

Wine - Chardonay, Rose, Cabernet

I would maybe try to through in a light beer in your beer selection.