Open Bar- Consumption vs Drink Package

I did consumption. My venue had a one hour open bar included for cocktail hour so that took care of most of the people who don't really drink and were nursing the same glass of wine all night. I would say 25% of my guests are regular drinkers. The rest don't or hardly ever. By doing consumption with drinks averaging around $10 each vs $50 per person for 3 hours of open bar, my bill was only half what it would've been if i did open bar. Just try your best to guesstimate which guests will drink how many and see what works best. If your % if regular drinkers is more like 50%, I would say that'll be a tossup

We had to do consumption as that's all that the venue allowed. We have a lot of heavy drinkers and between the 3 signature cocktails ($2,000 for 150 servings) corkage fee on wine ($720) and open bar for 6 hours ($4,140) we spent about $6,860. Drinks at our venue were not cheap! $12 a piece for cocktails. Corkage on wine was $18 a bottle. We had 120 adults at the wedding. I'm not sure what the average pp for a bar package is but we basically spent $57 pp on alcohol.

@erin. Holy moly! $60 pp for alcohol. I'm sure you had an amazing venue but I think I would faint.

@Kaye Not sure where Erin lives, but that's standard in my area. We paid $72 pp and I don't think our venue was amazing. OP, we paid per person, but only because we didn't trust our venue. I'm sure we didn't drink nearly as much as we paid for, but I had a sneaking suspicion that if we did consumption they would ring up every drink twice, or ring up a corona as an expensive cocktail. Not everyone is honest, something to think about...

We had a full open bar (we did the package for 5hrs). Everyone that went to our wedding are heavy drinkers, so $42 pp seem reasonable- we have top shelve alcohol, upgrade on wine and beer. Just for reference- our wedding was in Western Mass

Ours was going to be about $70 a person for open bar and we knew not everyone would drink so we did a consumption bar and I think we saved money doing it that way

ETA: I'm south of Boston

For 112 guests, we paid $2900 for consumption bar. We have a mixed bag of heavy, light and non-drinkers. Open bar would have been $4400 So we saved money there. Definitely know your crowd.

ETA: I'm just north of Boston, MA on the coast

I would base it off of how much you really think people will drink. We are doing an open bar, but we supply the drinks and bar tender, which is great. Another place we almost went with, the charge was 40/pp for anyone 21 and older. It would have been around 3800. We are only spending about 1000, now.

How much is the open bar package and how much for each type of drink?

Also how many guests and how many are light drinkers and how many not so light?

We can help with the math