Open bar timing?

I guess this would have to be a know your crowd thing, because in my experience not everyone drinks wine, so I'm not sure why the open bar wouldn't just be served for the entire event.

I've been married before. My first wedding, there was a line at the bar at the start of dinner even though wine was being served at the table. Not everyone likes wine. Personally, I would just open the bar at the start of dinner rather than making it more confusing for guests. Since you're doing table service wine, you might find that the open bar doesn't add that much extra cost.

So the cocktail hour bar would be open, just not the bar in the dining room during dinner? I guess it would depend. For our crowd, we have a lot of beer drinkers so tableside wine wouldn't be that appealing to anyone and we are doing a buffet so I assume some guests will get up and walk around and go to the bar before their table is called, or on their way to sit down?

We decided to skip the table wine and just have an open bar all night. Cost wise cutting the table wine made that extra 1.5 hr of open bar affordable, if someone wants wine with dinner they can walk up to the bar and get a glass

View Quoted Comment

Good point. It's probably easier to have a hosted bar for the entire evening. I'm going to ask my venue if there is any discount to remove the wine service, because it's included in my package.

I would not. We had literally the exact same set up for our wedding with wine service and everything. Many of the younger crowd and older men got up to get beer during dinner because they weren’t wine drinkers. A few of my friends preferred cocktails.

We are having three hour open bar. 1 hour for the cocktail hour. We will skip open bar during dinner, because people can grab drinks before hand + we will be having champagne served. And then after dinner we will have open bar again for the next 2 hours of dancing. We are going to have signage by the bar with details.

We have decided to have only signature drinks at cocktail hour. During dinner the wait staff will serve tea, lemonade and water table side. And after dinner the DJ will make an announcement that the bar is now open.