WIBU to ask guests to BYOB to my wedding?

[mrso123]

DP and I are hope to get married next year and have just started planning the day. His parents own a farm and I would love to get a big gazebo and hold the reception there. I like how personal it would be and most of our friends and family are quite local so there would be no travelling costs for them.

We would be getting married at the local church which is 5 minutes away then go up to the farm and have everything else there - photos, bubbly, canapés, speeches, sit down meal, evening reception with band...basically everything that would happen if I booked a hotel/country house type venue.

Obviously there would be no drinks license, and I had hoped to not have to go through all the hassle of getting one and arranging a bar. So I thought of providing some drinks for my guests and saying that they can bring a bottle(s) with them.

Do you think that would be ok or is it a bit cheeky? How/where would you word it on invitation? Not sure if it would be appropriate on the front page

As a guest I personally would love it as it would mean I'm not spending £££ throughout the day!

I'm a venue event manager and I have a personal license. You only require a license for "sale of alcohol by retail".

So basically you can't go to France, buy a car load of booze and have your bar and get people to pay cash. You would need a premises license, which you can get very easily temporally from your council, but along with that, you would need someone to have a personal license and that's a qualification not many people have.

But a free bar - no problem at all! It only if you are selling it.

But a BYOB wedding sounds fab!

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Sounds amazing!

For the storage dilemma, you could get books of raffle tickets and pay the 18y/o to collect and label whatever people have brought?

I have an alternative suggestion - if you have any links with them get the local young farmers club to run a 'just above cost price' bar and they get to keep any profit, and it still doesn't cost you as you/they make your beer money back. A lot of people I know have done this for weddings. YFCs often run a lot of events and therefore often someone amongst them has a personal license.

Therefore your guests get a choice of alcohol, they don't have to carry beer to the church and your local charity (YFC) gets a fundraising boost.

Meh. Hospitality is hospitality. If you're providing (not selling) booze, there's no need for a license. Why not invite less people but treat them to the booze? If you really must go this route, I agree with a PP - you need to state clearly on the invitation that you don't want gifts as you're asking them to BYOB.

I disagree HomeIsWhereTheGinIs (great name ). No difference to BYOB after meal/welcome drinks/toasts than cash bar after the same. People don't seem to have issues with presents for the latter. Lousy poems and demands for cash gifts aside of course.

I agree, over the moon, bring what you want, cheap cost - happy days
As you said maybe provide some wine/table drinks and a glass of bubbly for toasts and let people drink what they bring

Are people really that addicted to alcohol, that they must be 'treated' to it at every occasion?

I think it's a great idea. Most weddings these days don't have a free bar anyway, and like you provide the bubbly or some wine but then after that you pay for your own drinks at the bar. BYOB would be even cheaper. And to be honest when I am going to a wedding I would rather pay for a few of my own drinks than see my friend bankrupt themselves by buying drinks for everybody.

Wow your wedding sounds like it will be fantastic. Many Wedding venues charge rip off fees for drinks, as did the last Wedding I attended. Some guests popped to the local supermarket and sneaked their own drinks in. Bring your own sounds like a brilliant idea. Enjoy the planning.

How about a buffet instead of a sit down meal so everyone can come for all of it and not just an 'evening do'? Or even a BBQ.

My main concern was being cheeky to family, family friends-essentially anyone who isn't our friends, so thought I would canvas opinions here.

I know our friends would definitely appreciate it as they are all either 1.getting married, 2.having babies, 3.getting on the property ladder or 4. recently graduated, so the lower the cost to them, the better. I would be happy to have no gifts, and will indicate this, if asking guests to BYOB.

With the exception of one, every wedding I have attended/been invited to is in a country house/hotel type venue with a pay bar and generally cost a fortune to attend when you include travel, accommodation, drinks and a gift. For the open bar wedding, we paid £250 (as requested by b&g) which included accommodation and then food and drink on the wedding day, so not unreasonable but still expensive. Generally in our group of friends we spend a lot of money at weddings!

Were not actually saving much money doing this-the cost of the caterers is the same as what you would pay at a venue, the marquee isn't far off the venue charges when you include all the flooring, hiring chairs and tables etc. So its not about us saving money, its about having a nice personal wedding and very little inconvenience for both us and the guests. Hopefully...

I think it sounds great OP. I'm awaiting my invitation with excitement .

Maybe you should write a crappy poem requesting no gifts! That would confuse the AIBUers

Sounds fab.

I would say 'no gifts, but bring a bottle' on invitation.

Not paying ridiculous hotel bar prices sounds like bliss to me!

Also anyone with DCs will absolutely adore not shelling out £2 a glass for soft drinks.

This really irritates me, why when there is wine and champagne on the tables is the never orange juice or lemonade for DCs and my non drinking DDad.

I'd have no problem whatsoever bringing my own, and don't think it sounds cheeky at all. I think it sounds a great wedding. I'd much rather a wedding BYOB than some extortionate hotel charging £6 a glass of wine or whatever so your wallet goes home crying or you end up being skint at the end of the night and resorting to tap water!
I'd love to go if it was me. Actually, can I come?! I'll lead the Conga and dance to Agadoo and Dancing Queen with all the rellies....

Cant understand why people think if youre asking people to byob you should say no gifts. I dont think I've ever been to a wedding with a free bar all night so I cant see why this is any different. id much rather bring a couple of bottles of wine/prosecco of my choice than pay over inflated hotel prices. Think it sounds like a fab wedding

mrso sounds like you have most things covered if you have marquee company and caterers. We were on a really tight budget so we went very DIY with ours, and sorted out crockery, glasses, furniture hire, etc. ourselves. We also pulled in favours left, right and centre. It really was a fantastic day, and five years on people still talk about it (In a good way)

Only things that spring to mind at the moment are glasses for drinks - might be an idea to get a stock of the better quality plastic glasses for people. And if you're going disposable then you're going to need some bins dotted around. You might want a 'smoking area' with some buckets for cigarette ends too, otherwise people will just put them out on the ground and that's a really nasty job to clear up.

The other thing that you haven't mentioned is toilets... you probably don't want people traipsing in and out of the house, and you can rent fairly pleasant toilet 'trailers' - it doesn't have to be festival style portaloos.

It might be helpful to mention to guests the type of ground that people will have to cross to get to the marquee... it might affect the female guests choice of footwear - for example, if it's grass they might choose something other than heels that are going to sink into the ground. Or, you could go with the basket of flip flops that I've seen mentioned elsewhere, so that people can get out of their posh shoes.

One of the best things about doing things the way that we did was that it wasn't 'just a day'. Both of us are several hundred miles from our home towns - friends turned up the day before and helped us set up (although I didn't let them stay on farm the night before wedding) and then stayed to help us clear up afterwards... we ended up with a barbecue and mojitos / daiquiris for the second night for a select few before we went on honeymoon on the monday.

We went to a wedding like this last summer and had a brilliant time. B&G laid on a hog roast but guests brought all the alcohol and there was far, far too much - I think they are still getting through it! A lovely idea. Don't forget about soft drinks and mixers though (people were rocking through neat rum and JD towards the end of the night...)

Oh... and electricity supply to marquee is quite important too. You might want to sort out some outside lighting plus some picnic tables and chairs. If it's a nice evening then you'll probably find that a fair number of people will mill about outside of the marquee.

We just borrowed all the garden furniture that we could from everyone that we know locally.

I think it sounds fab. The last wedding I went to, we were evening guests. A lot of the day time guests had run out of money as the drinks were so expensive. One of the evening guests took several daytime guests into the nearest town to go to a cashpoint. We had to drink really slowly so the money would not run out.
Maybe you could get some plastic trugs to use as ice buckets. Have a couple per table if you want people to keep to their own drink. You might even get them in a colour to match your theme - if you have one. Although thinking about it, at parties we always just pool the drinks and everyone helps themselves to whatever they like. Depending how many people you will have that could work quite well.
I agree with what a previous poster said above, please make sure there is some fruit juice or soft drink available when you are serving the bubbly & wine.
Can you hire a few local teenagers to clear & wash the glasses throughout the evening.
It might be worth looking at somewhere like Costco to see if you can get the drink cheaper.
If I was invited to your wedding I would probably spend even more on your present, as I would not be spending so much on drink. Not that Im hinting or anything!

We did this! We had 50 guests including children so bought 24 bottles champagne and 2 bottles red and 2 bottles white for each table. Then a selection of bottles of beer and spirits, water and soft drinks for mixing.

We borrowed a huge coolbox from our caterers (can't remeber the name of it but it was one of the American brands) and filled it with ice and the caterers put all the fizz in while we had the ceremony and the wine, beer etc all went in throughout the afternoon/night with the bags of ice being opened and used as needed.

With it being a small wedding we just told our guests in advance that we would be providing basic drinks and they should bring their own if they wanted more (we don't drink very much and had no idea of how much to provide).

As it worked out, we overcatered and shared out the left over bottles when we came back from our honeymoon.

t3rr3gl35. That sounds like you provided loads of alcohol. It must have worked out at more than 3/4 bottle per person and bearing in mind some of the guests were kids and, I presume, some didn't drink it must have been a very merry wedding ,

Terrific idea. I've suggested this to my brother and sis in law to be for their wedding next year.

AreWeThereYeti - we did over provide - simply because we don't actually drink very much, tend to share a bottle of champagne on special occasions and sometimes a bottle of white between us at weekends so had no idea how much to provide.

We felt we had to up the quantity of table wine significantly as one of our guest who is, sadly, an alcoholic became very agitated that we wouldn't have enough when we discussed quantities with her, so we panic bought.