How much are you spending on alcohol? Advice needed

Hi everyone!

I am sure that there has been a previous post on this - but just in case there hasn't..... some advice needed on the amount of alcohol to provide.....

One of the things me my OH are quite adamant about is the supply of free alcohol at our wedding.  There are many views on this - some think it's ok to have a paying bar, or money behind the bar, but as we are having our reception in a marquee, we want to provide all the alcohol for free.  As my brother is in the trade he is assisting us on how much we will need, but I'm curious to find out from other brides who may be doing/have done the same thing.  We have approximately 80 day guests (8 or so of this number are children) and then the same again (all adults) for the evening party.  We plan to serve, wine (red and white), some cava for the toasts beer, gin, vodka, whiskey with the normal non-alcoholic mixers/soft drinks.  If you've supplied your own alcohol at your reception or are are going to, how much - money wise - did it cost you?  Did you have any left over?  Our caterers aren't charging us any corkage - just an amount to keep the white wine cold and a healthy supply of ice.

I am not doing my own booze but have experience in events-

I think wine and champagne is easier to calculate as you are looking at 5-6 glasses per bottle, If you were having a champagne reception i would allow 1 and half< 2 glasses per person depending on how long the reception is.  

For the meal i would allow half a bottle of wine per person and a half-1 liter bottle of water (unless you having jugs of tap water).

For the toast just need a glass per person or can even do half a glass if funds are tight.

As for the evening reception that is when it gets complicated how long is a piece of string? Are your guests big drinkers?  

At a very rough guess most drinkers will probably have 1 drink for every hour they are there however with free bars it does encourage people to drink quicker so maybe even a drink every 30-45mins.

Do you know what the the majority of your guests drink?  I'm quite lucky my friends and family are all vodka drinkers so i know i would need plenty of that and maybe only a bottle or 2 of the other spirits nobody really drinks larger so more cider or real ale or guiness.

As for cost again depends on the wine or brands of spirits you choose...Supermarkets seem to have quite good deals these days so you could stock up whenever you see offers, i'm not sure it really saves much these days doing a booze cruise to France.

I think Majestic have a sale or return policy for unopened drinks purchased through them so if you brought through them you might be able to return your left overs for a refund.

We bought all our own alcohol for the daytime (in the end we decided it was too complicated to predict what people would want to drink in the evening and therefore provide enough choice, so we arranged for the landlord of the local pub to come and set us up a little bar)

Anyway, we had 90 something guests and I think in the end we bought 132 bottles of wine/fizz. We wanted there to be plenty left over, so that people could drink for free in the evening if they were happy with our wine choice, but then the bar was there if people wanted spirits/beer. We had lots leftover at the end of the night - we were still drinking it weeks later!

We got all ours on the tesco website. I had an idea of what I wanted, so I just checked weekly for the deals and when I saw what I wanted I ordered. I think we got the 25% off when you buy 6 bottles deal as well. If my memory serves, we spent something like £640 which works out at just under £5 a bottle. Not bad including fizz and a nice NZ Sav!

Hope thats helpful!

We aren't doing a full free bar but have bought 4 bottles of wine per table so 20 red and 20 white, 6 bottles of pimms to be made up for welcome drinks, 15 bottles of prosecco for toast plus 4 apple juice, 4 orange juice and 2 squash for the non drinkers and children and that cost £480, our friends and family drink a lot so we just couldn't afford to do a free bar we have 120 guests in the day and 180 in the evening, would have loved to have done one though x

Completely OT but just noticed your ticker Michelle, hope Lily has a lovely 1st birthday!

Sorry can't advise on free drinks as we can't afford that. We are providing 3 bottles of wine for each of the 10 tables, just got the preferred varieties of red and white from the Asda 3 for £10 range, which has cost us £100 + £90 corkage. FFIL is providing champagne for small drinks reception, and I expect we'll put on some nicer wine for that as the quantity will be a lot less, and it'll probably be people's first drink.