Free / Open Bar at Wedding

[Eva90]

We are fortunate enough that my dad is VERY kindly offering to pay for our bar tab at our wedding next year, for the evening party (we will be providing day drinks after ceremony and at dinner etc). There will be around 140 adults - both our family and friends are big drinkers!

We will be limiting this to single spirits, beers and wines only (no doubles, shots or cocktails on the tab). We will also set a tab limit.

We're unsure what to set the tab too, we want to be able to cover the majority of the evening if we can. My dad is very generous but I also don’t want him to have any shocks at the end of the night! The bar staff will also update him every £500 or so, so he is able to keep track.

Has anyone had an open bar at their wedding (or no one someone who did) and can share how much it came to? And for how many people?

Thanks so much - I am just totally clueless on trying to work it out! X

We had an open bar 9 years ago. Think it ended up about £1500.
We restricted to beers, wine and soft drinks. Lots of my friends were also buying bottles.

No experience sorry but could it be an option for DF to purchase wine and beer maybe from a wholesaler and agree a corkage at the venue if need be so he knows what he is paying at the outset? May that wouldn't apply to your circs but just a suggestion.

My dad put a grand behind the bar and also limited it to beer, wine and single spirits. It watered 60-70 people very well!

Not sure how helpful but we had an open bar but supplied all of the drinks ourselves. Was significantly cheaper and one reason why we didn’t want an ‘all in’ venue - couldn’t stomach the cost of corkage for bang average wine. Still reckon we were at about £1000-1500 10 years ago (inc 2 casks/keg beer and cider) similar numbers and some big drinkers.

We are doing this for the day time and supplying our own beers/wines (no corkage luckily) so it's just evening part from 7-11:30pm when the venue bar opens. I assume that any wine and beers we have left over from the daytime can still be drank

I did this for my 40th and it was £1800 for about 40 people

My wedding 40 people 2k
My sisters wedding 110 people 2k

Mine had shots (we officially cleared the bar!)

If everyone had 4 drinks that would be 5k.
I think that would likely be average.

Get tokens for a couple of drinks each? Limit to single shots of spirits!

I would not assume this I would check

I'd rule out spirits to start with. That gets messy very quickly.

Limit to beer and wine and soft drinks-no cocktails or spirits. That in itself will cost a fair bit and at a very cautious 5 drinks each at £5 that's still £3.5K

I don't drink wine or beer (& i know a lot of people who are the same) so wouldn't be up for it being limited to just that.

Why doesn't your dad put an amount behind the bar & when it's gone people buy their own?

Or give everyone 2 'free' drinks tokens to be exchanged for a wine, beer, single shot & mixer or soft drink.

That way everyone gets 2 free drinks of whatever they want.

I’d do two/three tokens each. Not only to monitor the amount, but to hope it doesn’t get really messy.

Just ask the venue, they'll give you an idea of what to set aside.

If there's going to be a limit then moving to charging you need to make that clear on invitations. Free bar generally means free all night.
A wedding this summer included limited cocktails but no shots.

I also wouldn't assume this. I was at a wedding earlier this year where any leftover bottles from the day time were quickly swept up and put aside by venue staff and weren't allowed into the evening.

Think ours was approx 3k, that was 13 years ago and no limits were put on it. People could have what they wanted.

100 to the day and 120 to the night.

My wedding, 14 years ago, 200 evening guests and the bar bill as approx. £5,000, it was at a country house hotel type venue and we thought we got off lightly!

I got married 20 years ago and we put £2k behind the bar for 150 people. Once it ran out, the bar reverted to paid. We budgeted for 3ish drinks per person. That was a ‘posh’ hotel. I would doubt £2k would touch it now.

At current hotel prices a glass of wine can easily be £8-10 a glass. If you worked on 4x drinks per person over the evening. I suspect you'll be looking at between £4k and £5k for the night. It would be worth getting the drinks menu and working back from there.

Be clear that the free bar doesn't include premium spirits, doubles, shots, cocktails, champagne or bottles of wine.

Our total booze bill was a little over 7k and that was 11 years ago! We did have a lot of champagne though. And it got pretty messy!

The way they they normally calculate is:
Whatever the number of guests halve it.
Then allocate beer, wine, spirits costs based on your knowledge of guests. (Bear in mind even in the heaviest drinkers no person will drink more than 1/2 bottle of spirits)

Honestly I wouldn’t do it. It is money down the drown. There are far better ways to spend that money. And who really begrudges paying for their own drinks at a wedding?

Unless he has cash to throw away, think of something else

I run a mobile bar, as a guide in cost:

If you have 140 guests and want an open bar for 4.5 hours (from 7pm to 11:30pm). If each of your 140 guests drinks on average just 1 drink per person, per hour - that’s 630 drink serves, at an average cost of £6 per drink. The spend would be £3,780.

I'd be very careful if you have big drinkers in your circle. Sometimes people get carried away when the drinks are free and it gets incredibly messy and out of control. I'd be more inclined to do the voucher thing so that each person can claim 2-3 drinks free and after that they pay. If you let it be known there is money behind the bar that will run out, then some may go mad and order rounds and rounds of drinks at the start to get the freebies, leaving little for anyone else.

I think it was about £5k at my friend's recent wedding but some people were buying quite fancy spirits.