Free bar *for certain guests*

[girlneedshelp]

We get married soon and my FIL has offered to put some money behind the bar for drinks, but only for certain guests (bridal party / close family I believe) what would be the best way to show the bar that said persons are paying with the tab as don’t want everyone just saying ‘on the tab’ - thanks in advance!!

Honestly there’s so much drama about a few drinks! I’ve organised plenty of weddings (other people’s not my own!) and the bridal/groom party having a tab is really normal.

Welcome drink and ample wine on the table is more than enough for guests. And a cash bar after the breakfast is fine. If your FIL wants to fund drinks for the bridal party then normal guests are not going to get snotty about this. I swear MN is a parallel universe sometimes.

I think FIL is being a CF

He's so lazy he can't even set up his own bar tab. Sheesh

Where do you get this, @SexTrainGlue ?

If you read the OP, it doesn't say that FIL has even asked for help with this. He wants to buy people close to him some drinks. The OP presumably has decided to help manage this tactfully. We don't know that FIL has asked anything at all, never mind that he's lazy or a CF.

...and if there are 200 guests, I don't see anything at all wrong with a generous FIL wanting to treat his close relatives and friends. It's no more a two-tier wedding, than going to the pub and only buying a round for your friends, makes it a two tier pub.

You can't expect the poor guy to pay for 200 people's drinks instead of 10-20.

We did this with our photographer who is a friend and offered to do the photography for us. As a thank you, we paid for his hotel room and he had a laminated bar tab card for him to buy drinks with.

We also laid on drinks after the ceremony for when photos were being done and reception welcome drinks so everyone got a fair few rounds on us before it became a paid bar.

I think this is really hard to execute with class and without it looking a bit mean (despite being the opposite).

I would ask him to make a contribution to the champagne or wine. And then, if recognition is important for him, someone can thank him in the speech. Either that or he buys rounds on the day.

Impossible to manage gracefully. Unless he takes an envelope of £20s and slips them to his selected guests hard to do without upsetting someone though

Why doesn't he just give each group a 'kitty purse' with some cash in it to use to buy rounds? We always operate a kitty when we go to weddings as a family group so it would look more natural.

I wouldn’t do this, not just because it’s tacky, but because it’s controlling on the part of the FIL.

If he wants to buy his own family a drink, why does he have to do it at the OP’s wedding, and in front of other people, such as close friends, that the OP may feel much closer to than family?

While I'm sure your father in law has the best intentions but this sounds like a logistical nightmare, quite easy to take advantage of and very likely to offend. Presuming that close family will be seated together, could he not pay for additional bottles of wine on those tables??