If you had a free bar at your wedding

[weddingweddingwoe]

What was the rough cost pp?

I have no idea, please help!

We are thinking wine, beer, champagne and soft drinks.

Depends how many people. And whether it’s for the daytime and the night time.

100 people, nighttime

You can cap if even if you have a free bar
So you can budget per guest and then when it’s gone it’s gone
You could always put wine on the tables / beers and again when it’s gone people but their own
If you can get roughly 6 glasses of wine / champagne out of a bottle then work on that basis per numbers attending
Kids and teetotallers - fruit shoots / water / fizzy drinks such as mixers
Impossible to say without knowing how many guests you have / venue as a pub would be cheaper than a five star hotel etc
I put £1000 behind the bar at an event I did two years ago for around 120 people

Around 100 people, just under £2000.
A lot of big drinkers too, although that didn’t include the wine on the table during the meal

Around £1700 I think it was

We did not. Cash was very tight, and we were quite upfront around this. We did buy a first drink and have wine on tables, but a free bar, particularly in a good hotel was at the time beyond our means. The wedding day itself is important, but for me far more important is what comes afterwards, i.e. married life, and I would focus the cash on this.

For 100 people at night time I’d say about £1700-2000

depends on the venue. Costs at a local pub or fancy hotel will vary a lot

We had a free bar but it was stuff we bought, venue had a licence but didn't sell drinks. Spent maybe £500-700 in total? Quite a long event but mostly daytime. People had a few drinks but only a few got plastered!! It was quite civilised.

If you don't want it to be too much you can always "put some money behind the bar" up to the value you're happy to spend

We had about 100 people and it was about £1500, that doesn't include table wine and welcome drinks though.

We self catered the wine so had a trip to France just before. We spent about £700 (but better exchange rate in those days - now probably £1200) but we had loads left over.

75 people, open bar, no caps on spending, but only house spirits and wines (i.e. not fancy gins). Evening reception in pub function room. £1500.

It's going to vary from venue to venue. If I were you, I'd put a cap on it, so you don't get any nasty surprises and so the less scrupulous venues are less likely to just add on a load of extra drinks

What’s the venue like? Is it really expensive?

We put loads of prosecco and red wine out then did 500 behind the ramp....70 guests all day and it was spot on. Just thought not everyone likes wine so those that didn't could have whatever they wanted

We put £500 behind the bar just so everyone could have a first drink or two on us (fairly small wedding). However a number of DH's younger work colleagues got to the bar the minute it opened and basically drank it dry with doubles of expensive spirits before a lot of people had even arrived for the evening do. I was not impressed! If i had thought people would do this (obvs I didn't!) I'd have limited what people could have as a PP mentioned.

We paid for soft drinks, and bought two casks of beer from a local brewery to put behind the bar (as freebies) cost us around £300 for 100ish people. You can do it fairly inexpesively if you avoid spirits.

I’d either put a cap on it, or just have a certain number of bottles out for people to drink.

I wouldn’t include champagne as it’s so expensive - cava or Prosecco would be better value for something like this.

We paid about £1500 for 100 people

From my observations as a guest take care with a free bar as there are likely to be a handful of other guests who may seriously take the piss meaning others could lose out.

How about drink tokens which you could provide for guests?

It was over 40 years ago so not relevant!

If you're rightly concerned about the cost you could always restrict it to wine, beer and soft drinks. The venue should be able to give you an indication of likely costs per person.

It depends on so much. Ours was about £3k for 40 people 5* London hotel the champagne we picked was about £70 a bottle and wine was about £50 which was paired with the food.

Work out average cost per drink and how many drinks you expect people to have considering how long they will be drinking for.

40 guests spent about £400

But that was after a lot of wine at the meal. And about 8 non-drinkers.

And over ten years ago so take inflation into account.

We had 100 big drinkers and put £1500 behind the bar. It didn't run out till 11:45 and it shut at 12 so thought we did well. Mostly because we also bought alotttt of prosecco and wine for tables.
Bar money was a big priority of ours when we were planning and we cut corners that other people spend loads on.