Open bar or not

We are doing a full open bar. We thought about doing signature drinks, but it was actually more cost effective to just do open bar. And it seemed more convenient to just let people choose whatever they wanted to drink.

Check with your venue and price it out. Some don't allow outside alcohol either.

We are doing full open bar because it's easier than beer/wine/signature drinks and they are giving us a discount for open bar so it's cheaper.

If you are looking to save money, I would consider just beer and wine.

View Quoted Comment My venue allows outside alcohol Im gonna do jack crown royal vodka and. Fire ball because i 💘 that and still do the blue long Island cause thats my fav plus wine and beer but when it's gone its over lol

Full open bar - it's part of our package.

I totally like the idea of custom drinks, and being able to bring your own otherwise, more than an open bar. This seems much more customized and thought out! ❤ (Plus, Long Islands are my fave >w<

View Quoted Comment How was it more cost effective to do an open bar? I’m curious because I just went with signature drinks assuming it’d be cheaper!

View Quoted Comment Mines too I'm goona have a few other choices but not tons of liquor thank you for your input

View Quoted Comment I always was told sig drinks are the way to go if you want to come back cost open bars are more costly

View Quoted Comment Our venue gives a flat rate for open bar. There was no option to do only signature drinks – they could only be added onto the open bar package. So we figured it was pointless to add signature drinks if we were already having an open bar

View Quoted Comment Oh that makes sense. We are bringing all of our own alcohol (our venue is a museum so we have to bring everything from outside) so it’ll be cheaper for us to go the signature drink rout!

View Quoted Comment Oh for sure!

View Quoted Comment Yep ours is the same way I don't want to go over a thousand for our bar limit what signatures are u thinking of

View Quoted Comment

I want to know this as well! Trying to keep our bar costs low so I assumed beer, wine and 2 signature drinks would do it. Plus I’m not a drinker and I don’t want people getting hammered at my wedding if they have access to a lot of hard liquor, because we definitely have some friends who can’t control their alcohol lol. There is no bar package at our venue so maybe that’s why others have an easier time?

I do NOT recommend a full open bar.


People tend to drink more when it’s not on their dime.

That creates a liability issue for you as the Hosting party if someone leaves your event totally inebriated and has an accident.

We were limited to 🍻and White 🍷 per venue contract. However, we opted for just the Wine and only for Toasting to reduce our liability.

Everyone was perfectly fine with the 🍋ade, 🍹, and🚰 that we provided.

View Quoted Comment I totally agree with that I have a bad conscience even though everybody has grown they should be able to handle their own drinks if something was to happen if somebody left I would always feel bad about it so that's why I don't want people to get to ship face that I just want them to have a great time

I had open bar at my wedding last week and we literally stocked the bar with so many options... we ran out of all our alcohol by 8:30pm (party was from 4-12) I know it’s a long time but people ended up leaving to a nearby bar because they wanted to get more alcohol even though we had beer and wine still left. It was sad because we wanted to party until midnight at our venue but nothing you can do! Some people stood to party with us but maybe think about having the bar open after dinner instead of before dinner because people are going to take advantage and get drunk way too early. I’d suggest beer and wine only before dinner and open that bar right after dinner to party. Just a suggestion

View Quoted Comment Agreed!! I was so upset to see people stay by the bar and drink until we ran out of liquor! Right when we ran out they left.

View Quoted Comment I totally agree our reception will be from 5 to. 12 but the bar will not open until 6:30 until 11 to give people an hour to die down but I think I will look the bar of beer and wine from 5 till 6:30 good ideas