Smuggling alcohol into a wedding reception?

[jessie777]

Would you? Have you?! Did you get caught?!

It is all down to cost.
I suppose if the bar charged £3 or £4 for a 175 ml glass of wine fennel fair dos. However I've been to weddings which are ' average' not luxurious in terms of the venue and they seem to think it reasonable to change £6.50 for a glass of wine which isn't even nice. I could buy the bottle for £4 for a supermarket. Add onto that a fresh orange and lemonade around £5 for a large, £2.50 for a small glass of coke and if you're not carefully they pile ice in so that you only get half of the glass filled with coke and I don't blame people for smuggling drinks in.

Nowhere except wetherspoons charges 3/4 £ for a glass of wine because it's financially impossible to sustain. And I certainly don't want to be stuck drinking in wetherspoons.

Is your £6.50 wine 250ml? Because that's £19 a bottle which at the 4x markup that's industry standard in order to make a not very substantial profit means a £5 bottle from supermarket.

My dh is a manager in the hospitality industry and we have long conversations about markups, breakeven points and profit margins.

I do agree where prices go up just for awedfibg it's out of order but that's a wedding industry problem that applies to every part of it not just a glass of wine.

Round my way it's about £6 for a glass of wine + £1-1.50 for a splash of soda (or a shot of lime). In lots of places a pint of Shandy costs 20p more than a pint of lager as a half of Lemonade is £2.50 and half a lager is £2.40.

How can soft drinks cost more than alcohol when the product cost is next to nothing and the tax on lemonade is much less than that on alcohol?

Doesn't encourage people to drink sensibly when a glass of disgusting sweetener filled soda stream type lemonade costs more than lager.

It's tacky and rude. Some guests at our wedding decided to have a car bar, the wedding venue found out (as it's fucking obvious to see people heading out to the car park with a drink every 10 minutes) and fined us. So everyone else's 'free drinks' cost us a fortune in the end. It's not a secret that wedding venues charge a fortune for drinks, plan ahead or don't drink as much!

And as for the suggestions of putting vodka in fruit shoot bottles and baby food pouches - yes, that's a genius idea. Children are never running around at a wedding reception are they?? Seriously??

Nowhere except wetherspoons charges 3/4 £ for a glass of wine because it's financially impossible to sustain

They do though. Many many places do. Not in London, but everywhere else....

I live in Scotland so pretty far from London and they honestly don't.

Not anywhere you would drink out of the glasses anyway.

I've worked in many pubs and the landlords always say if everyone drank fizzy drinks they'd be rolling in it. They by the syrup for pennies and sell it for pounds. The drinks they said they'd have to go out of business if everyone drank were things like guinness. They only make a few p on those sometimes, so make it up on the soft drinks.

It's not so long since you could get a bottle of wine for a fiver in some of the student bars in Leeds. I had two.

Plenty of places will do a bottle of wine for £10, which is £3.33 for a 250 ml glass. There's a chain of pubs that does 'fizz Fridays' where you can get a bottle of Prosecco for £10/12 on Fridays in the early evenings. Admittedly they will be hoping you buy food, or stay on to buy more bottles at full price, but plenty won't.

Do Sam Smiths pubs still charge less than £2 for a pint of beer?

How do Wetherspoons do it BTW?

Surely nobody holds their wedding reception in wetherspoons though? I wouldn't take my own drink to a wedding reception as I can afford to buy my own. I feel sorry for people who can't though. I can remember when my DH and I were much younger and skint and worrying we would be due to pay for 2 rounds at a wedding for the table when we could only afford to buy one! They can be really expensive.

Wetherspoons do it by economy of scale and squeezing out competition. Bit like Tesco.

Of course there are places which charger £3-£4 for a glass of wine, I visit them regularly
Have you never been in a sams smiths pub.
The one I visit is set in beautiful countryside, a very old pub. Real honecooked food by a chef, the cidar and beers are renounced for being cheap yet very good quality.
It's not in London, not everybody lives there. Yet travel a few miles up the road to a wedding venue and the price of substandard wine and beer is so much more expensive.

Sorry but your overpriced venues do themselves no favours. Others can and do do it. Just because you aren't lucky enough to have such spoils on your doorstop does not mean they don't exist.
Lots and lots of pubs have gone out of business , people can be far more choosey about where they spend their cash.

No I have never been in a Sam smiths pub. Perhaps they're an English chain. Do they regularly host weddings?

I've had a google, they don't appear to be a chain as such more of a brewery tie in.

I take it they only stock their own brand beers and wines?

Samuel Smith own their entire pub estate ( and several properties at Canary Wharf and the town of Tadcaster) and own all their drinks and food production. Absolutely everything is in-house. It keeps the prices down and assures a constant level of quality, especially with the beer and spirits. The downside is that some of their pubs are fusty relics of a bygone age.

Barbara - yes they do.

We live near one. They have three different lagers priced at £1.40, £2.30, or £3.00, and three different bitters priced at £1.34, £1.92, and £2.02.

It's not bad in there. They do have functions, and although nobody would call it posh, it's clean and well looked after.

How do Wetherspoons do it BTW

Volume (economies of scale) and also thru buy beer and stuff super close to the end date because they know they can get is sold thru quick enough.

Lots and lots of pubs have gone out of business , people can be far more choosey about where they spend their cash

Do you think that says something about how hard it is to make enough of a profit from a pub? they have been fucked by rising employment costs, high increasing pressure on rents and other uses (flats), smoking ban and people drinking less generally.

If you want to pay super market prices, drink at home.

You don't have to pay near on supermarket prices to drink at home, see the above posts.
It's not my concern where anyone chooses to drink.
If I visit the aforementioned pub I drive and have a cheap soft drink without being ripped off.
Unfortunately i can't afford to live in the village, much as I would love to it's beautiful, it's far too expensive.
I can however walk to the local cricket club, that's cheap just a bit dull.

People do hold weddings and functions there though.
They don't tend to in the San Smith's pub, the rooms are very small, another reason I like it . Many small rooms full of character.

Plenty of people do choose to drink at home, one of the reasons pubs are closing.

Hipster that is why I would never take my own alcohol to a pub. It us rude and unethical.

I agree with a pp about it not being just drinks that are expensive because it's a wedding. Our family always used the same florist for years (birthdays, Christmas, Mother's Day, Thank you etc) and thy were always fantastic, lasted ages and were at a good price. They even got business from recommendations we made. The day we came to looking for a wedding florist we didn't think twice about going there. When the price came back it was high; in the thousands high! We went somewhere else and got better for less. As a check though my friend went into the florist and ordered the same amount of flowers but said it was for a family dinner and got charged a third of what we were!

You just need to learn how to play the game. We got married on a Thursday because it was 70% less than a Friday or Saturday. My £2,500 dress was £499 pre loved and sold back for £250. My chosen cake design was quoted at £490 so I made it myself! It's easy to cut down in other areas so maybe put some of the savings behind the bar.

I did once at a wedding, a small bottle of beer was £5, a glass of wine was nearly £10. The venue was absolutely taking the piss. Sadly for them being in Brum rather than out in the middle of nowhere they had a Bargain Buster offie nearby. We had a run for a few of us and stashed them under a table.
I wouldn't normally be bothered but it would have been an incredibly austere wedding otherwise.

I don't know why the bridge and groom would overextend themselves to the point where they had to have a cash bar.

In any case, do not smuggle alcohol into a reception - terribly childish behaviour.

AJ, I think weekday weddings cost guests way more than buying drinks on a Saturday. I've decided many invitations for Thursday weddings that wothave cost hundreds for us to attend and used up precious holiday. I think It's usually just passing costs and inconvenience on to guests to save the b&g money.

When we got married we did it at 4pm on a Sat so everyone could travel in the morning and didn't have to take days off work or pay extra overnight costs.

AJ- that's why many moons ago I made my own bridesmaids flowers after paying a fortune for my bouquet.
We didn't choose a venue with rip off drinks prices though and we had a Saturday wedding.
Each to their own.