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.

We didn’t. We provided a drink of choice on arrival, another for cutting the cake, 1/2 bottle of wine with the meal and a third drink of choice for the speeches. That alone topped £3,500 for 120 guests. That said uncle ‘single malt’ took the piss as his wife doesn’t drink so ordered 2 johnny Walker blue labels each time and water for the wife at £14.50 a pop!

Absolutely not 😂 DH family literally drank the car dry at our (very well stocked) venue! 😂

Ps, that was 13 years ago!

I used to work at a posh wedding venue, and it’s a bit of a difficult question because it really depends on how much your loved one drinks and whether they are piss takers. We’d often have open bars that’d cost up to £4K and we’d be clearing up half drunk whiskies at the end of the night. Or people would come up asking for two doubles of top shelf vodka and down them.

There are other options than a completely open bar. You could offer just beer, wine and soft drinks, but guests pay if they want spirits. Or drink tokens can work quite well. At least people don’t just drink half and abandon the rest if there’s a limit.

There’s also the putting money behind the bar trick, but again, it depends if you can trust people to have restraint! I worked at weddings where word got around that money was behind the bar, so people were taking the piss and getting 2-3 drinks each before the cash ran out.

I have been to a couple of weddings where beer tokens were given to guests. 2 each. With the wine on the table, plus fizz for toasting, that was fine.
Saves the issue of people rushing to drink before the free bar runs out

We had 2k behind the bar, also wine on tables and prosecco etc as welcome drinks. The bar tab lasted until about 9pm with around 60 people.

We had 70 people and it came to £900. We had put £1.5K behind the bar, however we didn't even come close, despite one bloke trying to do as many shots as possible as 'it was free'. Funnily enough, he was the only person I didn't want to invite but had to as he was married to my friend (not any more thank God). Everyone else enjoyed it, but noone else took advantage and I was glad we did it.

That was in a pub in North Yorkshire in 2018.

We did but purposely chose a venue we could do this at as it was important to us and could afford bar prices! I worked out the drinks cost (alcohol and soft drinks) was around £1250. People got to venue about 3:15 and ended at 12. 150 people during the day and 30 or so more colleagues at night.

We limited it to wine, prosecco, beer, cider, port and soft drinks.

To clarify, we took all our own alcohol, hired free glasses and paid a bar man and glass clearing/washing staff.

You don't need to do a free bar. We certainly didn't and it was fine. Nobody goes to the pub, restaurant or hotel expecting never to have to buy drinks, surely! If they do then that is their problem.

Just decide on an amount that you can comfortably afford to put behind the bar and do that. Estimate using an average cost of maybe a couple of drinks per person. Costs will obviously vary a fair bit depending on the venue etc.

Once it's gone it's GONE. Everyone should expect to buy their own after that.

My friend put little wooden hearts on the table for 3 x drinks per person. It worked really well.

If you have a free bar then it is wise to limit what people can order (e.g. wine, beer, single spirits and mixers). Otherwise, as others have said above, you will get people ordering bottles of fizz, cocktails, double vodkas willy nilly and that will bump up your costs.

It really does depends how much your guests drink and how much money you have. I wouldn’t offer free champagne!

£35 pp for the premium package which included cocktails. We’re in Yorkshire though which is generally much cheaper.

@vajingleberry

If you have a free bar then it is wise to limit what people can order (e.g. wine, beer, single spirits and mixers). Otherwise, as others have said above, you will get people ordering bottles of fizz, cocktails, double vodkas willy nilly and that will bump up your costs.

This would be a tab bar. A free bar is paid for upfront and it wouldn’t matter how much the guests ordered.

Yep. Drinks tokens are a nice idea and makes it fairer. In my family there'd definitely be one or two getting more than their fair share! 😂.. I'd hate that.

We had an open bar (as I'm used to calling it) as I'm originally from NZ and it's pretty unheard of to host people at your wedding and then expect them to pay for their own drinks! We chose the table wine (which was unlimited but we had decided on which red and which white) and then after dinner it was free bar but no cocktails, red bull etc. We tipped off the barmen not to serve my cousins top shelf spirits but other than that it was a free for all!

The table wine and open bar came to about £2500 for 100 people. We had thought it would be a lot more. You might be surprised how little some people drink there will be people who are ill or pregnant. We did put a backstop on the bar (in case the aforementioned cousins went really wild) but we didn't get near it.

Personally I would prefer a cheaper venue but to pay for the bar. I think expecting guests to pay for drinks (often at ridiculous prices because the couple have chosen a venue right at the top of their budget) is rude. Give me a church hall and a free bar every time.

For 100 people we paid around £17 per guest for unlimited house bubbles, red, white, lager and soft drinks. We also provided some beer kegs which the venue was fine about.

If I recall correctly it was £25 per head if there were less than 50 people.

Little tokens are quite cute. Can double up as table decorations/place setting type things.

£2-3k would do it x

We assumed 1 bottle of wine per person, half a bottle of champagne, and then lots of beer and shots (mainly for DH's gang of friends who drink pálinka and Jagermeister

@Brainwave89

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.

Very helpful response to OP’s question I had a free bar and it hasn’t impeded my married life in any way. Sorry about that!

Ours was around £2800 for 150-ish guests, from 6pm until 1am. No one was doing anything stupid or taking the piss, everyone I know would be mortified to appear that way. If my friends were that way inclined they wouldn’t be my friends in the first place.

11 years ago:

Just the bar (not wine with food or champagne on arrival)

90 odd people, £1000.

But we let them order what they like.

I think a beer, wine, soft drinks policy is good if you want to reduce the bar cost

We had champagne served as a welcome drink for evening guests and then again when we did the cake cutting and toasts later in the evening. Then we put £1000 behind the bar for wine, beer and single spirits, when it was gone it was gone. I do remember it being fairly late when they told us guests were beginning to have to pay though, and there were quite a few big drinkers. This doesn’t include day drink that we paid for, and there were 80 day guests, 20 more in the evening.