Wedding Cost

8 Responses

1. Bride2Be 10-17-09

   2009 Nov 25 1

   My fiance’s sister just had her wedding. She had about 200 guests, and they didn’t have open bar, just beer and soda. Everyone else paid for their mixers. His family is a huge drinking family, and I believe for just the beer and soda, the tab was $2500.
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2. jen

   2009 Nov 25 2

   I don’t have a number for you, but I do know buying wholesale is the way to go. As for a bartender, do you have a close relative or friend that would be willing to donate their time in lieu of a gift? Just another way to cut costs.
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3. meadow<has.heard.it.all.b4=P

   2009 Nov 25 3

   There are usually a few options
   1- open bar of course
   2-you can set a budget say $300 after that people have to pay
   3-open bar for inexpensive stuff like non alcoholic drinks, beer n wine, then people have to pay for anything besides that
   im sure there were more but i cant remember.

   we set a budget based on what was suggested may be needed for the amount of people we had, people drank a lot but less than expected and we got the difference back after
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4. ask a question, get an answer

   2009 Nov 25 4

   We provided our own alcohol for 80 guests. The catering service we used for the buffet dinner included a bartender to serve the drinks so I don’t remember how much that portion cost by itself. We didn’t want to do a cash wedding because I’ve hated it whenever I’ve seen it at weddings.

   But we didn’t have a full bar with mixed drinks, we only had beer and wine. It was far cheaper to do that because my father-in-law homebrews beer as a hobby and we bought the wine/champagne in bulk from Costco.

   If I had to throw a number at all the alcohol I would say around $600 for about 30 gallons of beer, 2 cases of wine, and a case of champagne. The bartending service (including setup and equipment) was probably another $500 for a 5-6 hour long reception.

   So overall, around $1100-$1200 total.

   It went great, the bartender had a table (with a tip jar) to serve wine from the bottles and beer from the kegs. The caterer also had coffee, fruit punch, and ice water (late July wedding so it was hot that day).
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5. Blunt

   2009 Nov 25 5

   My liquor was $40 per person for 5 hours of open bar with top shelf liquor service. It included table side wine service with two servers and a bartender. There was an extra $5 per person charge for the champagne toast, so altogether $45 per person, plus tax and service fee.

   Good luck
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6. mrsbtobe

   2009 Nov 25 6

   I’m having open bar, premium drinks for $3500. Its for 120 ppl
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7. MathNerd

   2009 Nov 25 7

   We put a certain amount $1500 toward the bar that went only towards beer and wine and when it ran out it ran out. When you have a full open bar things will run out rather quickly, both money and liquor. My friend had an open bar and there was no option to pay a flat fee per guest so she paid for each drink by guests….her tab was over $7000 and half tried drinks were everywhere because people ordered them just to try it and then left it there. Good luck.
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8. Missus

   2009 Nov 25 8

   It amazes me that people are willing to put themselves into debt to have friends booze at their wedding. Cash bars are the norm and accepted where I am from. I think that it is terrible for wedding ‘ettiquette’ sources to still state that open bars are required.

   My friends experiences with open bars at their weddings ending up costing them double-triple what they expected. One couple ended up $5000 in the hole – for booze? C’mon….
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