Thoughts on Open Bar (per Person) or Consumption Bar (per Drink)?

Consumption Bar CAN be cheaper but there's a lot to consider. Remember, that most times guests who may not be big drinkers in their normal lives feel that at a wedding they'd like to really "live it up". So, someone who may only have a glass of wine at dinner every once and awhile may decide to get 10 mixed drinks and dance their hearts out at your wedding. This factor could drive up your cost for a Consumption Bar.

Doing half and half may work solely because if you tell the guests ahead of time they may get pitchers of alcohol for their tables that will last them the entire night. It's kind of a way to cheat the system. BUT you have to tell your guests ahead of time...like on the invitations because if they don't know that part of the night they'll be expected to pay for alcohol they may not bring money. You also want to tell them outright because, as horrible as it may seem, people may choose not to go. Let's be real, people enjoy weddings mostly because of the booze, the food and the entertainment.

My suggestion is to do Beer and Wine open bar all night. That's the best case scenario. You can close the bar during the dinner hour. If you think it's too expensive, i'd play around with other costs like centerpieces (no one will pay attention to them after 5 minutes) or bouquets (they're nice but they don't need to be huge) or maybe only provide a cheese table instead of any food being passed before dinner. After all, you're treating your guests and I think your guests will want alcohol.

Only you know what you can afford, and how comfortable you are with part of the bill being completely unpredictable (e.g., consumption bar). However, if half your guest list are considered "heavy drinkers," I probably would not choose consumption over an open bar because your costs will be completely unpredictable.

I totally understand it's a lot of money. For daughter's wedding, I'd describe the guests as half heavy drinkers and half more social drinkers (or some who don't drink at all). We did a full premium bar for 5 hours @ $35 pp (without tax & service). Toward the end of the night, I jokingly asked one of the bartenders "if we'd gotten our money's worth?" with the open bar. He laughed and assured me, we had a "heavy drinking crowd, and DID very well with the open bar" (versus if we'd done consumption). At a big party with dancing, I think people put drinks down frequently, then just get another later. Daughter rarely drinks at all, and she said people were handing her drinks all night -- like probably 10 or more over the course of the night. Based on your consumption price, the bar cost for her alone could have easily been $60-70 -- and that's just one person.

Personally, I think it's confusing to guests to mix the options over the course of the night, so whatever you choose, I'd try to do something that you can be consistent about. Including cocktail hour, daughter's reception was 6 hours. They did 5 hours of open bar: a full hour at cocktail hour (then guests moved to the reception space); the bar in the reception space didn't open for a half hour (during that time was the grand entrance, B&G 1st dance, and speeches; however, there was poured champagne on the tables when guests entered the reception space and many brought a drink with them from cocktail hour); the bar then opened as they started serving dinner and remained open until 30 minutes before the end of the reception (thinking some people would have started to leave by then and most people didn't need a fresh drink right before they got in their car to drive home, we figured closing it a little earlier was okay). It worked well for us. I think people felt like they were very well hosted, had plenty to drink and plenty of options about what to drink, and we knew exactly what the total cost was going to be so there were no surprises. It's hard! Especially with your larger guest list, it's a lot of money no matter how you do it. Good luck!

Totally feeling your stress on this one! My FH and I are kind of in the same boat. Both of our families are not big drinkers, but our friends are. Right now, we have decided to have the open bar to a certain $$ amount. The venue has assured us that once we get pretty close to the $$ amount that we set for them that they will let us know, and we can either choose to up the amount or have it be a cash bar after that. It didn't make sense for us to pay per person since the majority of people there will not be drinking.

I think you just have to weight what is most effective for you. Are you going to make the money spent per person worthwhile versus having to pay per drink? Would you rather pay upfront for the costs and not have to worry about receiving a huge bill at the end of your wedding night? Either way you go, I think your guests will be happy to have a few free drinks.

Thank you very much Teresa! I completely forgot about that first point that people do tend to drink more at a wedding to live it up. I will need to add whatever bar option we decided to do on the invites as well as also have it listed on the wedding website. If people don't come based on us not having a full open liquor bar all night that would be so sad but at the same time since we're on a budget that wouldn't be such a terrible thing. Lol! I plan on letting everyone know well in advance and will try my best to make sure we are able to host our guests to the best of our ability and to what our budget can allow. That is also a really good thing that you pointed out about possibly cutting down on the centerpieces/bouquets and such. I will definitely consider going smaller on those things now!

Thank you so much for the suggestions!

Thank you so much for your reply as this information is very helpful! Considering if our guests do drink that much $60 per person is absolutely a no can do! Haha. So maybe we could do some more calculations to see what open bar for the whole 6 hours would be vs the consumption and then we might have a better idea after that. And wow, that does seem really confusing to mix up the bar then. We will need to keep that in mind for sure. We both have huge families so it's sooo difficult. If we could go back to the beginning with the idea of having a much smaller wedding this whole thing would probably be so much more less stressful. <_< Very good tips to know!

Thank you very much!!

Every experience i've ever had with this issue has confirmed that consumption bars will almost always be cheaper than per person. I would go with consumption, and host whatever combo of beer/wine/liquor you are comfortable with.

We toured a venue that only did consumption bars and the unpredictable cost had me agonizing too!! They also gave us the option of handing out drink tickets (the venue coordinator would do it as guests entered), so we could plan for a "maximum" bar cost.

I'm sure drink tickers are a very polarizing concept on these forums, but if that idea works for you and your crowd, maybe see if your venue can do it?

I think mixing bar options can be a little confusing for guests. I'd seriously consider just doing wine and beer all night if your budget allows, it will make things a little simpler. I don't agree that people will decide not to come if you can't offer a full bar all night. But I don't believe that people attend weddings for the open bar, I believe they do it to be a part of a momentous day in your life and to celebrate a new chapter in your life with you. Your friends and family will do that whether there's alcohol or not.

Personally, I would go with just wine and beer. I feel like liquor would encourage people to get a little rowdy, at least with some of the drinkers in our families lol. Consumption bar seemed like a good idea to me at first, but my biggest worry was that people would go way overboard and it could end up being more expensive than the open bar. I almost decided to nix alcohol all together, but I've been told that seems cheap So we've decided to stock our own bar. 75% beer, 25% beer, approximate 1 drink per guest per hour (4 hours) and when it's out, it's out. We're expecting about 100 guests and plan on serving three kinds of beer, one white, and one red wine and will be able to do so under $500! But our venue is not very restrictive at all, yours may require a licensed vendor/bartender. Good luck with whatever you decide to do, I'm sure it'll be great!

I would do consumption as it is VERY confusing when it switches to cash. I must say that I do not mind a cash bar, ever. I am rare, I know! Is it an option to host Beer Wine and Soda but then do cash for mixed drinks?

I want to thank you - for someone who is not a big drinker, thank you for thinking of your guest's comfort. You are very considerate!

I agree with other posters that switching from one type of bar to another throughout the night is overly complicated. If you can afford it, I'd do open beer/wine and two signature cocktails (and maybe the cocktails available only during cocktail hour, if necessary). But if you can't afford it, beer/wine only is totally fine. Personally, I don't think that you need to tell folks via your website what drinks you are serving/hosting. I think the only reason to mention the drinks on the website is if you end up with a cash bar - so people can plan for that.

As for hourly pricing vs consumption - venues generally know what they are doing with their hourly pricing - they don't price it in such a way that they'd take a loss. Paying on consumption almost always works out with a smaller bar bill, BUT... you have to be willing to take a risk. The reason hourly packages are popular is because you know up-front what you spend will be. Most folks are more comfortable with that. Even though I do this for a living and have loads of evidence that I save money with a consumption bar, I have to admit that for my own wedding, I'd be very tempted by the hourly pricing so I'd know ahead of time. We humans aren't always logical.