Wine & beer

We are only doing wine, beer, and champagne. We aren't "high-end" kind of people, therefore everyone knows what to expect, I guess. Weddings are so expensive and they are supposed to be about us, yet we are paying for everyone else to have good and drinks, as well. I would suggest, if you're worried what the guests will think, ask them. You may be surprised what answers you get.

We are doing wine and beer only. Our venue is BYO so I'm not sure what protocol is for liquor, but we hired bartenders to serve from our catering company. We will be purchasing beer and wine and bringing it to the venue.

Never make anyone BYOB because it isn't a frat party when you're 18, it's the largest party you'll throw in your life. Beer and wine is just fine. You can give them the option to buy not, that's not tacky because they aren't REQUIRED to open their wallets. Beer and wine is more than enough.

People will not openly and honestly tell you "sure it's ok if it's byob or cash bar". Beer and wine only is fine. You could also throw in a his and hers signature drink. Just don't make guests open their wallets.

The ceremony is about you. The reception is a thank you to the guests that came to support your ceremony.

If only beer and wine are in your budget, just have the beer and wine. That should suffice for the majority of your guests.

I've been to a wedding where they had beer and wine and charged for alcohol drinks. They did add two signature drinks that had alcohol that were included as well for people who don't like beer and wine. I think it went fine. My FH doesn't drink beer or wine. The only drink he likes is Captain's and Coke, so I know he appreciated the option to have the drink that he wanted even though he had to pay for it. If you feel like you want to give at least one alcohol option at no charge, you can always pick a signature drink.

I was just thinking about this! I've known some hotels that set up a cash bar unless you tell them specifically not to. I have definitely gone to weddings where a guest or two wandered down the hall to buy the drink they wanted. I mean, you can't really stop it sometimes.
I would remind the venue to *not* open the full bar if it wouldn't be open otherwise, but if it's a lodge or small club where you're renting out the whole place just keep it closed. I'd even put drapes over it if you're worried about confusing people.

I go back and forth with this but I think ultimately I would rather have the option to purchase liquor if you are hosting beer and wine. I don't know why you think your budget would go awry... is your group heavy drinkers? Budget 2 drinks for the first hour and 1 drink for every hour after that. Use the average of the drink prices or do this twice with the most expensive and least expensive drink to get a range. It should be close enough for you to know if this will blow your budget.

i.e. If the average drink price is $8 and your wedding reception is 6 hours and 100 guests, you would do 6x$8x100= $4800. Calculating it this way would give you an idea of what price you are looking at.

UO here, but i would leave the liquor as cash bar if you cant afford it. You are doing your part by hosting beer and wine. As someone who prefers an actual cocktail, id be ok with purchasing it on my own so i can have what I WANT, rather than what you could afford.

Not like id get upset if it wasnt an option, but id prefer to have what i want.

Thanks for all the feedback ladies. I appreciate your input!

@An sorry I should have specified regarding my budget...we do have a bunch of heavy drinkers but I was mostly talking about my budget going awry if there was some other type of life emergency. I’m a worrier and plan for the worst so I was just thinking if something bad happened that required us to utilize money from our wedding budget or something. Not a likely scenario but I like to have a back up just in case.

Beer and while will suffice. We will be serving beer a d wine only; however, we will also offer a signature drink as well. Maybe offer a signature drink.

My venue doesn't allow hard alcohol. We are serving beer and wine along with two sangria options.

Also we bring in our own alcohol at our venue, so that's a budget saver.

We will be hosting beer and wine, and two signature drinks. The rest will be cash bar. I don't drink wine at all and I love beer, but FH and I are picky about what beer we drink. I would much rather have the option of purchasing a drink I want to drink with my own money rather than not drink because there was nothing I would drink available.

Is there a huge differential between the two options? For all the proposals we have been given, we are going to be just about $900 for full bar for 80 people which is really close to the bar and wine only option. But our proposals all have a flat fee per person for the alcohol, not dependent upon how much people drink. Beer and wine only would be fine, but it may not be as cost saving as you imagine.

Our reception is open bar for the first hour, and after that beer and wine are free. We had no option in this as the package automatically came with one hour open bar for everything. My parents graciously offered to pay for the reception, so I'm not even going to ask them to pay more for an open bar. Our venue offers 'fountains' of whiskey sours, rum or vodka punch or a couple other options, we will be adding one of these, and we plan to pick up the tab for any liquor consumed by our guests.

If we weren't picking up the tab though, our guests would be able to purchase any beverage they were interested in.

I have been to a lot of weddings that are beer and wine only. Everyone still had a great time and nobody complained about the lack of liquor.

I think it would be fine to have the option to purchase liquor. Personally, wine makes me sleepy and I get full after a couple of beers, so I'd probably want to switch to liquor while dancing and I'd prefer to have the option to pay for it than not have it at all. A signature drink or gallons of sangria/punch/etc is also a good option.

We are doing hosted beer/wine with a cash bar option if others want more than that. We don’t have it in the budget to do a full bar at this point. I’m still trying to figure out how to word this so that guests that choose to pay for liquor know to bring cash

I hear so many differing opinions on this, I'm honestly not sure what the right answer is. For my first wedding we did beer and wine only, but my ex's family mostly didn't drink and my family is pretty much wine only so it worked out well.