Wedding Bar: Open, Cash, or None?

No bar. We opted to buy alcohol and put them on each table instead. It wasn't in our budget to have a bar aha but that woulda been nice.

Open. We have no desire to have a dry wedding and a cash bar was out of the question because we don’t believe it’s our guests responsibility to pay for any aspect of our wedding.

View Quoted Comment What kind of alchol veill you be serving? Wine? Will guests be able to take shots? Will you have a signature drink?

View Quoted Comment Will your guests be expected to tip the bartender?

View Quoted Comment In my culture everyone wants cognac aha as cognac is a cultural sign of wealth so we pretty much just bought cognac and our venue was nice enough to provide wine.

We had an open bar. Absolutely would do it again. Between that, great food and great music, over a month later, I’m still hearing from people about what a fantastic time they had, and that makes me happy!! (By contrast, we spent very little on decor, attire, aesthetics, that kind of thing.)

We opted for a DIY wine/beer bar with signature drinks. The bar was open. My in-laws payed for the alcohol which, I think, amounted to about $200 for 50ppl. We went with bottle beer (yuengling and blue moon lagers) and boxed wine (Vella brand).

Honestly, about half that budget was spent on our wine guestbook..

View Quoted Comment We will not have a tip jar and will be tipping the bartender ourselves. We told the bartender that if any of our guests insist on tipping, which knowing our friends and family they will, that they can accept it.

Top shelf open bar. I've only been to one wedding that only had beer and wine. Every other wedding has been full open bar.

Open bar, but only with beer and wine due to the particular fee structure at our venue. We pay a flat fee per guest and it's not based on consumption. Our reception is at a winery so I think our guests will be fine with it, honestly!

No bar. Our venue is in a dry county so we couldn't have alcohol if we wanted to. Neither of our parents drink, though, so they wouldn't have paid for it anyways. A lot of people in our circles either don't drink or haven't minded that we're having a dry wedding so it's been fine!

Going dry. In my area going hard on liquor isn't very popular for weddings to begin with. Both my fiance and I can't drink for medical reasons (even the smell has made me sick) and if we wouldn't serve food we're allergic to why would we do anything different about drinks?

We had an open bar - it's pretty standard around the Chicago area, and most venues include some kind of open bar (whether it's well, top shelf or some combo) as part of their wedding package. Our venue included all catering and alcohol so it was a no brainer.

Modified open bar with beer and wine. We’re doing a good combo of domestic and imports and good wine, so I think our guests should be satisfied. In my area, it’s equally as common to have dry receptions and open bars, so I thought we came up with a good compromise.

Our venue would’ve charged $20 per person per hour (would’ve been $10,000!) for a full “open bar” so that was totally NOT doable for us lol. We also had a Sunday afternoon wedding and some of our guests don’t drink at all, so it seemed very unnecessary to have that much. We ended up having a consumption bar where we served wine only (wanted to do wine and beer, but our venue gave us such a hard time about it, long story short, so we just said let’s do wine only) and we waited until all our other wedding expenses were set in stone, and then put the entire remainder of our budget into the consumption bar. Once it hit that limit, the bar became a cash bar—and that ended up happening in the last hour of the reception, so everyone had already gotten at least a drink or two on us and didn’t mind paying for a third on their own if they really wanted it.

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Open bar! Our venue is "supply your own" everything except tables and chairs. We'll have a 3 different domestic beers I think, inexpensive red and white wine, and different ranges of hard liquors. We're not allowing shots. Probably make a margaritas.
Looking at more traditional venues we also would have done open bar with either house or call brands.
Everyone should have fun at a wedding reception for free. People come to the wedding ceremony to see the couple get married. They stay for the reception to CELEBRATE and are thanked for attending. There is little interaction between the guests and couple depending on number guests so it's important they are treated well too. It may be "my day" however others are taking a day of their lives to be at "my day" so yes, it matters.
People like to drink, full stop. Especially at social gatherings. I don't drink often, we have family in recovery, some don't agree with drinking. Drinking is optional but at least it's an option and it won't cost you a dime.

Our budget is a smaller budget for inviting 180 people. Good food and free drinks were most important. We knew we could make everything else work inexpensively. The ceremony is only 20 minutes and the reception and cocktail hour total to 5 hours. Guests DO leave early if they pay for drinks. Some WILL NOT dance without alcohol. They WILL talk about it behind the scenes. We've had the best times at not the best looking weddings because everyone was having a great time. They didn't have money to make everything upscale put they did provide food and alcohol. No one was trashed. The brides and grooms looked terrific. One was on a Sunday afternoon/evening too.
Would it have been the same with a cash bar? No. With no alcohol options? Həll no.

We’re doing open bar but with beer and wine only, liquor will be cash. We also have a pretty much supply your own venue on most things so we have a bartender coming in from a local bar and we pay them depending on what is consumed

View Quoted Comment Oh okay, thanks for sharing.

View Quoted Comment Same here, my wedding guests are still talking about the good time they had.

View Quoted Comment Can you elaborate on what a wine guestbook is?