Our Alcohol Numbers Before/After

These prices are from Ohio state minimums for the champagne and beer. The wine was half gifted to us and we covered the other half. We brewed it at a local store. The liquor prices are lower than minimums because we ordered it online and shipping from Illinois. They do not ship to all states, though. (www.theliquorbarn.com NOT liquorbarn.com It has “the” in it!)

We had:

Red Wine-----Merlot------------------------------29 bottles

White Wine---Souvignon Blanc-----------------29 bottles

Champagne---Marinti & Rossi Asti ($21.99) --12 1.5L bottles

Bottle Beer----Bud Light 24 pk ($20.49) -------5

Bottle Beer----Oktoberfest 12 pk ($15.99) -----4

Bottle Beer----Rebel IPA 12 pk ($15.99) ------6

Vodka---------Smirnoff ($17.99) ----------------4

Rum------------Bacardi Silver ($17.99) ---------2

Whiskey-------Jack Daniels ($38.99) -----------2

Whiskey-------Jameson ($39.99) ----------------1

Scotch---------Black Label ($27.99) ------------1

Gin-------------Beefeater ($25.99) ---------------1

(all alcohol bottles were 1.5L (largest size) except the Scotch Black Label, which was the standard bottle size)

Leftover:

Red Wine-----11 bottles (I gave 4 or 5 away)

White Wine---6 bottles (I gave 4 or 5 away)

Champagne---3 bottles

Bud Light-----33 bottles

Oktoberfest---5 bottles

Rebel IPA-----42 bottles

Vodka--------- 1 and 1/4 bottles

Rum----------- 1 bottle

Jack Daniels-- 0

Jameson-------0

Scotch---------0

Gin-------------0

Thanks so much for this!

Thats cool. thanks for taking the time to post. Looks like your guests had fun! :o)

This is so helpful, great idea Pancakes! I'll share my numbers too! We had a pretty limited bar, but it was open! We had around 90 guests excluding vendors and kids.

Beginning:

Keg of Coors Light- (approximately 165 bottles)

Keg of Yuengling Lager- (approximately 165 bottles)

Red sweet wine- made by my favorite local winery- 48 bottles

White sweet wine- made by same winery -24 bottles

White semi-sweet wine made by different local winery- 12 bottles

Jack Daniels- 4 1.5L bottles

Smirnoff Vodka- 5 1.5L bottles

Leftover:

Keg of Coors Light- none

Keg of Yuengling Lager- less than 1/4 keg

Red sweet wine- made by my favorite local winery- 18 bottles

White sweet wine- made by same winery- 16 bottles

White semi-sweet wine made by different local winery- 3 bottles

Jack Daniels- 4 x 1.5L- none

Smirnoff Vodka- 5 x 1.5L- 2 1/4 bottles

Apparently we had a lot of beer drinkers, I thought for sure we would have a lot more wine drinkers but I was able to return the unused cases so I'm glad I was able to be safe and have extras!

This is pretty good! Thanks Pancakes

Thanks guys...this was extremely helpful.

Interesting! Thanks for posting!

I need to find my slip for what we ordered but from what I remember ordering and from what we have left I think my guests may be a big group of drunks lol

GREAT info! Me and FH are trying to decide if we are going to cover any of the alcohol expenses. We are currently considering paying for $300-$500 worth of wine and beer and leave everyone who wants straight up liquor on their own.

That's funny, our wine was totally gone and our hard liquor was barely touched. Maybe because we had a signature drink so liquor drinkers went for that instead.

All in all, we spent $1,068 in alcohol for the wedding. Beer, wine and champagne was our most expensive, with liquor totals only coming to about $300. But I know Martini & Rossi is a slightly high priced champagne. I just knew I liked that one the best (from what I've tried) and wouldn't mind the leftovers. But the house rental for our honeymoon left us Cook's champagne and it was fine. I would have preferred Martini and Rossi, but Cook's is half the price and guests just get a small glass. We drank a bottle ourselves on the honeymoon. We didn't want to end up with tons of barely used, opened bottles of liquor, so we kept it kind of tight. Though it would have been nice to have 2 bottles of Jameson, solely because of our crowd specifically. I'm surprised there weren't that many red wine drinkers! Maybe because Merlot is a lighter Red? Idk. Just thought I would help since it's a huge question!

We used this calculator and rounded a little down and made some adjustments based on our friend group (Jameson, ordered an extra vodka since it was so cheap and we throw a big Halloween party every year and make syringe Jell-O shots with Vodka, etc.):

http://www.perfect-party-planning.net/drinks_calculator.html

Observation: People will drink all your Jack Daniels!

Here is my slip. I believe we have 3 12pks of Sam lager left, 2 12 pks of Amstel lites, a case of white wine, and 4 bottles of red wine. Nothing else and our friends even went out and bought more budlite for the bartender to serve.

Eta: we went through 10 750ml bottles of the Bacardi big apple for the signature drinks! Wow! This was 91 drinking aged guests with many older relatives.

This is awesomeee, thank you!

But do you not have liquor stores near you that buy back unused alcohol? Or did the price make up for it? I'm just curious because I plan on overbuying and just getting my money back on what we don't use so I don't have to worry about if we bought enough.

@K&S - If you don't mind saying how much was your alcohol bill? We will have just about 86 guests and your list would be a great list to go by *Pancakes also!* ~ We aren't allowed to have hard liquor for the reception.

Tara - Lol. Apparently! I thought DH was crazy for getting two bottles of Jack. And I see KandS went through 4 bottles!

jomabago - We didn't ask if local stores would buy back the liquor. Some of the prices from the website were over $15 per bottle cheaper on liquor, so we just went with them. Shipping was cheap (just had to have an adult size. Yay maternity leave friends! Lol). We were told that it is illegal for stores to buy back the unopened liquor bottles, though some do it under the table. We knew if we had the liquor, people would drink it. Which would lead us to a $60 bottle of Jameson (from our local liquor store) would have two drinks out of it and we would have the rest.

As for the wine, we made the wine ourselves, so obviously we can't return. It's okay, though. Christmas gifts, here we come! Plus, we throw enough parties among our friends to get rid of that and the beer before next summer. As for the champagne, I'm not worried about returning the $60 worth (3 bottles). We will just have a good New Years party somewhere

As for the beer: All of the boxes of beer were opened except one case of Bud Light. So if they did buy back the beer, it would only be $20 worth. Not worth anyone's time. Our friend's will drink it. The rest of the beer was taken out of their boxes to put on ice during the reception.

Nikkell402 - We spent $308 at The Liquor Barn (after a 5% off coupon from a quick search). The rest of that was beer, wine (our share was $175, bridesmaids covered the rest), and champagne.

I would like to thank myself for making the dent in your white wine offering. :-)

Lol. Yes. Jac helped with the liquor, OKD with the wine and Bethie with the champagne!

Ah, good to know. And I thought the alcohol would cost a lot more- probably the only time I will say that in regards to the wedding!

Oooh, do you guys sell your wine?!

@Nikkell402, our beer was $282 with the deposits, I don't know how much they were, I have to go down this week and pick that up.

Wine was a total of $555.49 but I got back around $360 when I brought the unused cases back.

Liquor was $404.79 but I bought a few additional things in there so it was probably closer to 350.

I'm going off my bank statement for these prices so I don't have exact amounts. Hope that helps!!