How many drinks per person?

moongarden

Can anyone please tell me how to work out how many drinks to allow per person for a wedding with a free bar?

We are buying in wholesale so how many barrels of beer/bottles of wine to allow. We are expecting 100 guests but 11 are children so working on 90 drinking.

thanks

Robinred

We are doing the same thing, funnily enough today is the day I tried to start working it out! I found some websites that said one drink per person per hour. If your guests are anything like mine you will be thinking hmmm, not very realistic! :rotfl:

I think I am going to go for 2 drinks per person per hour, and then add maybe 50%, we are hoping to get sale or return so I want to have too much rather than not enough.

Are you having a free bar? I think we are going to have free drinks on arrival, during toast and meal, and then ask for a £1 donation into a bucket per drink, and then maybe close the buckets after we recover the cost of the drinks after the meal. Does that make sense? So we don't pay free drinks all night (for 150 people!) but we don't make a profit either (that would be so wrong!)

If you can get sale or return then that takes a lot of the pressure off.

HTH

Birdie85

That sounds like a good idea Robinred, I wouldn't mind paying £1 a drink!

I think 2 drinks per hour is quite a reasonable estimate, at least for the few few hours! It'll get balanced out I'm sure, there'll be some people getting a new drink every 10 minutes, and there'll be others who have 2 glasses of wine all night.

ladymarmalade

I also think that sounds like a nice idea robinred....then at least the guests get a good deal ,but as you say you're not making money off them either.....I am just not sure how exactly you will know when you have recouped all your costs...will someone be keeping a tabs on it? Otherwise its a lot of pound coins to count!

Lady M

johannalf88

I was wondering this too, as we are having a free bar. I think it depends on what you are planning to serve. 2 glasses of red wine will usually go slower than spirits or even non-sparkling White wine. You can't guzzle champagne but you can beer!
We were planning on only getting champagne for the toasts, getting barrels of beer from local brewery, and thinking a bottle of wine per person. Again planning on getting the return if unused thing- think if you say it's for a wedding etc Tesco will buy back.

Robinred

Lady M - lol I know i don't fancy counting all those pound coins! I think if we work out how many drinks will have sold by the time they have paid for themselves, put all that lot of drinks on say the left hand side of the bar, and then all the extra on the right hand side of the bar. When all the left hand side has been drunk put the bucket away and start on the right hand side. I think we will get a nice barman to sort out when to put the bucket away etc. We are only serving beer and wine I think so should be alright to put the 2 lots of drinks on either side, and if e.g. the wine from the paying side gets used up before the beer they could just sell a few from the free side before switching over. Gah it is simple ish in my head but written down it looks a nightmare! I need to draw a diagram or something!

LEJC

Have a look at what hotels offer within a standard wedding package and add a little accordinly....typically a package includes

A welcome drink...

1/2 bottle of wine per person during meal...roughly 4-5 glasses in a bottle depending how generous you pour

a glass of something for a toast...5-6 champagne glasses to a bottle if you use something fizzy ...more if you dont fill them fully...

you could also add some bottled water to the tables as this always goes down well with all...

thats quite a good place to start with your calculations although you also need to factor in that some of the adults may prefer a soft drink especially if they are driving or it is very hot...
and dont forget plenty of water/soft drinks for the kids theres nothing worse than a dehydrated youngster at a wedding!

obviously you know your guests and their tastes so you will have to factor in the pints of beer accordingly...and remove the wine allocation...

Scotsbride

have a look at this website http://www.realsimple.com/holidays-entertaining/weddings/wedding-wine-liquor-calculator-00000000008314/index.html I know it's american but it will give you a rough idea

Sammy85_2

I think your £1 a drink idea is great but will be very difficult in practice to work out when you've taken enough money to recoup your costs.

If i had this option i would probably charge £1 a drink and put a sign on the bucket/bar saying any profits will go to charity. People will be happy with this as they are getting a drink very cheaply compared to usual hotel/wedding prices and they'll be doing a bit for charity.

stationaryace

we'd loveto do the £1 a drink at our reception, 50p for a soft drink. this happened at a friend's wedding last year and it went down a storm. can't afford to fund a free bar (my family drink a lot!) but also don't want to be somewhere that bankrupts my sister :eek:

Sammy85_2

I would love £1 a drink! Ours is £2.50 a pint, some of the hotels we looked at were nearer £4 a pint.

I really think a £1 flat rate for alcoholic drinks all night will go down a storm.