Providing my own alcohol. Need advice!

Http://www.thealcoholcalculator.com/

-Costco/Sams Club have cheap booze. And you do NOT have to be a member to buy. Although I'm not a fan of keg beer, its better at events like this UNLESS your bartender pours the bottle beers into glasses for your guests. As the night goes on and the drinks flow the likelihood of someone dropping a glass bottle is more and more probably.

-Have at least one red and one white wine available to guests. Cabernet and Pinot Noir are pretty satisfying, but a lot of people like merlot. Chardonnay is a great universal white wine.

-The size of the table would depend on what you're offering, but if you can get a taller waist height table, or rent a portable bar for your bartender it would definitely be appreciated....after an hour or so of bending over a normal height table pouring drinks that bartender will have a sore back (I know from experience!)

I didn't realize you could rent a bar. I'll have to look into that. Thanks for your advise @Maltese!

With kegs you run the risk of having a lot left over, that just has to be thrown out. You can't keep a half-full keg; unopened bottles you can. Plus you can have more variety with bottles. I'd pick three different beers and two wines (a red and a white). We're using a regular 6 ft table as our bar, since the venue doesn't have one. Everything I've read says plan for ~1 drink an hr per guest, so that's what we're going with. As for how to order, you'll just have to call around to places in your area and find out. We're getting the wine from Trader Joe's and the beer from Sam's, we did not place an order in advance.

@Christine:

I just did a quick search in your area so you could see what I was talking about:

http://bigtenrentals.com/rental/portable-bar/stow-away/

Wow $80 isn't bad for a bar rental! I'll let FH choose bottle or Keg. We do live near a giant total wine. anyone have luck with their coupons? I heard you can get some good ones. If I want a Riesling for white wine should I also provide a different white since it isn't one of the norms? It's my favorite.

Kegs are easy if you want just one type of beer, but I think it's better to give people a choice. At ours we're probably doing Bud (FH favorite), Yeungling (my favorite), a light (Miller lite, bud lite etc.) and a local craft beer like Riverhorse seasonal or something.

We will probably do bottles since we are beer snobs but draft is better. Maybe I'll take a vote with my friends and see what they think. My one uncle only drinks Bud and I told him to bring his own lol. He does to all the family holidays anyway.

-Start buying it now, if you want. Talk to your local stores and ask them their usual procedures for weddings.

-I would avoid kegs. If you know you have a big beer drinking crowd, maybe do half a keg. But there are just a lot of frustrations with a keg.

-Unsure on table size. Do you know, yet, how you will store the beer? In tubs on the floor in ice, maybe?

-Types of wine - Usually one white and one red is sufficient. If you know your group is more red than white drinkers, maybe add one sweet red and one dry red, in addition to a white. But more than one white and one red is not required.

-Unsure about accuracy of the calculators. This is something that is hard to predict!

-Ask the store if you can return un-opened wine bottles. I've heard some allow that. Have you decided on the signature drinks, yet? Ask your friends and family what their favorite drink is and go from there. Usually a vodka and rum are pretty versatile. Just need some coke, sprite, maybe grenadine (for people like me who drink Vodka, Grenadine and Sprite to make a Cherry Vodka Sprite drink), cranberry juice and redbull. You should put someone in charge that can keep an eye on the bar and have it re-stocked every so often so that you don't have to do it.

We had a small, afternoon wedding with about 40 adult guests. All of our alcohol fit on one banquet table. We started buying bottles of wine here and there about three months before the wedding, so the cost was absorbed by our weekly grocery budget (and didn't kill our wedding budget). We started with 10 bottles of wine and ended up with 3 leftover. We bought a big round wash basin, filled it with ice and used that to keep our beer bottles cold (sitting on the table). We started with 7 6packs of bottled beer and 2 6packs of hard cider. We had about 12 bottles leftover. Our crowd consisted of 2/3 social drinkers and the rest were light drinkers or don't drink at all.

We did beer and wine at our wedding. We had A LOT leftover. I was glad that we went with the decision to do glass bottles for beer. We got ours from SAMS. We got Sam Adams, Yeungling and Angry Orchard(the only one of the three we drink. ). We didn't run out of any kind of beer and people had PLENTY. But we definitely had more Sam Adams than anything else leftover.

As far as wine, we just had two options: red or white. And people were happy with that. Our wedding was in a bar/outdoors so it was pretty warm. Not may people drank wine. Cant help with bar size because we had the beers in wheelbarrows and only served the wine off of a small bar.

I am going to hire a bartender. We will probably store the beer in tubs with ice to keep them cool. There are a lot of breweries out here and I wonder if that would be more or less expensive. I should get some quotes.

We have about 140 people and my aunts drink a ton of wine!! But my friends drink a ton of beer. lol I will definitely check to see if they take back unopened bottles.

I like the idea of putting the beer out in coolers, but should I not do that if I hire a bartender? Or can the bartender just do the wine and signature drinks?

Also, what is your opinion on tip jars? I could pay him less and let him put out a tip jar but not if guests help themselves to the beer, right?

I just looked and I think my tent rental company also has portable bars. That will be convenient. You guys are really helping me lay this out in my head!

That's great you are hiring a bartender! You are definitely doing all the right things for a backyard wedding to be successful, so kudos to you! And just try to get an idea of what wine your aunts like. Maltese gave great suggestions on which kinds. I would ask the bartender what he thinks would work best for the beer. If there will only be one bartender, it may be beneficial to just have them in tubs off to the side of the bar, to free up his time to do mixed drinks and wine. They will know what works best!

Tip - I always see a tip jar on bars. So I don't see an issue with that. My friends know to bring a couple singles to tip the bartenders at a wedding.

I would keep everything behind the bar for liability purposes. The bartender needs to check id and make sure people aren't drinking over the limit of what they should. If something unfortunate were to happen you are liable for damages because you provided your guests with the drinks in your home and did not prevent them from driving etc. You could always place the tubs behind the bar for the bartender to grab from.

Thanks @Pancakes! The only thing is that there is no backup plan for rain. I told everyone that the backup plan is "wear a bathing suit and I'll put out a slip and slide instead of the firepit"

I would like to have the bar be outside of the tent if it doesn't rain so fingers crossed!

We also have a shuttle to and from the hotel where every guest is parking. There will only be 2 guests under 21 and I told them that if I catch them drinking I will make the shuttle take them to the hotel.

We are providing the alcohol at our reception as well and my caterer suggested the same thing as some of the other smart ladies here. She said to offer a couple of varieties of beer and then do a red and white wine. Don't forget champagne as well if you are doing a champagne toast! You won't need much since most people don't like it, but don't forget about it. We will probably do Yuengling and Bud Light (and maybe one other), a Cabernet, a Chardonnay, and then two signature drinks. We were thinking Vodka/tonic and then fruity type drink like the Captain's Punch (aka Rum Runner). The caterer said not to go crazy with hard liquor and just to stick to vodka and rum because they are so versatile. If you do a signature drink, you could try having those liquors as well. Buying ahead of time is a great idea if you have a nice, cool, dry place to store all of it. Nothing worse than wine than has been sitting in the heat all summer long. (not to mention it would probably explode anyway lol) Costco/Sam's Club is great, but also check your local liquor stores to see if they provide discounts on cases. Ours around here will give you 15% off if you buy a case!

Christine, talk to your bartender about they recommend quantity wise. You know your people so you will know if they are a drinking crowd or not. Make sure to tell them that. Liquor quantity charts can be accurate but you often can't input what people are really going to drink (heavy vs light).

As for you catching an under 21 taking a drink, good luck with that. You aren't going to have the time to pay attention. Liability wise, your liquor needs to be served by the bartender. Someone gets to drunk and gets injured, injures someone else, breaks things or worse gets into a car accident, you could lose everything.

You can purchase hard alcohol and wine early. I would pick up the beer a bit closer to the date. For wine, 1 red and 1 white. You give to many choices and people get confused. Which means things will take longer. We recommend bottles over kegs for beer.

How much bar room you need depends on how many people you have coming. We most often work at a couple 6 ft long tables.

If you rent a real bar (nice), even if the rental price is low, ask what the delivery charges are. We get a flat fee because we use rentals every week of the year. As a one time consumer, they may charge you by the mile. We have seen the delivery charge list for more than the rental of the item.

We have to have whiskey at this wedding. lol We are too Irish not to. Should I still offer champagne even though I hate the stuff? I'm not going to fill every ones glasses with it. Speaking of glasses, will people even drink champagne out of a clear plastic cup? That's what I am providing.

Here's another decision:

We are just having everyone sit at the tables for the ceremony. Our pictures are before the wedding and there will be no cocktail hour. Should I let my guest grab a drink before the ceremony? Since I am shuttling people, there might be a slight down time before the ceremony. It takes 2 trips for the bus to get everyone there.

Did I say you guys are the best yet? Because you guys are the best.

I would forgo the champagne if you know most won't bother. A lot of people do not do a champagne toast. Instead of serving alcohol while people wait, I suggest serving soft beverages. Maybe do flavored lemonade/iced tea?

I don't think champagne is necessary, but I'm not a bit champagne drinker. I'll drink it for the toast but that's it.

My sister used one of those online calculators, nearly doubled the number of guests she was actually having, and STILL ran out of a lot of stuff. My family is Irish Catholic, so... The standard formula is 2 drinks the first hour and one drink every hour after that for each person. So you can do some math figuring out how many beer drinkers, how many wine drinkers, etc. and see how close that is to the calculators.

I think it's fine letting guests have a drink before the ceremony, especially with the shuttle coming early. You're probably going to have people standing around so it could be like a pre-cocktail hour.

I would forgo the tip jar. I hate them at weddings because you're shifting the cost of the bartender from yourself to your guests. Just pay it yourself.

I agree with Briggitte that all alcohol needs to be served by the bartender. Are any of your guests driving home from the hotel, or are they all staying there? If the shuttle is just taking them to the hotel and then some are leaving, that means they could be drinking and driving. And even if not, people can drink to much and get into all sorts of trouble if they're not driving. Just be on the safe side and have the bartender serve all alcohol. But it's fine to have coolers of water or soda sitting out!

I think that's all of your questions haha.