Estimating how much drink to buy

x_missymoo_x

Hi all,

We're not getting married until Aug 2012 but am starting to think about putting money away ready to buy drink.

We are buying all the drink ourselves and I have a number of willing family members who have offered to do 'shifts' behind the bar We're using a village hall with a rather nifty serving hatch which will be our bar

We are planning on having around 120 guests, I'd say around 100 of these are adults who would probably drink. We are not having a formal sit-down meal, but an informal help yourself BBQ. I'm imagining this would affect the amount of beer vs wine!

So... how much do you think I'll need? How much have you budgeted for your own reception or, if you're already married, how much did you buy and was it enough? Thanks!!!

LEJC

To be honest it all depends how much drink you want to provide for your guests....and what type of drinkers they are

Personally I would stick to basic drinks but a reasonable selection

BEER
LAGER
CIDER
WINE

fruit juices,squash,water

You also need to think about whether you have a fizzy toast or not

Lots of the supermarkets have deals on boxes of cans so I assume you could get them a lot nearer the time on possibly 3 for £20 deals..
You should be able to get 4 or 5 decent sized glasses from a bottle of wine and usually on a sit down you would allow a half bottle per person

If you opt for a fizzy toast then you should easily get 6 glasses per bottle so you would be looking at about 15 bottles for all your 100 guests...there are deals on fizz so you could also look at cava or something similar instead of champagne which could be as cheap as £4 per bottle

Dont under estimate how much the kids will drink....they can drink bucket loads of squash or similar especially if the weather is hot and to be honest if you have several adults who may also be driving they will also go for the soft option too...

MrsDrink

Someone on here explained how they rated each person as to how much of a drinker they are/likely to be (taking into account things like whether they are children, or drivers, etc). And based on that worked out how many glasses each person would have. I'll try to find the post in a min and link it for you. I also tried to second guess what my guests will be drinking - like I know my brother is a cider drinker and my mum is a lager drinker.

For my 54 guests plus MrD and I I have budgeted:

12 bottles of Echo Falls Chardoney 75cl (white)
6 bottles of Echo Falls Merlot 75cl (red)
12 bottles of Echo Falls White Zinfandel 75cl (rose)
12 bottles of Echo Falls Pinot Grigio 75cl (white)
8 bottles Bulmers Original Cider 568ml
16 Bottles Magners Irish Cider 330ml
16 Bottles Magners Pear Cider 330ml
8 Bottles Bulmers Pear Cider 568ml
20 bottles peroni 330ml
36 bottles corona 330ml
18 bottles of Bud 300ml
24 bottles of stella 284ml
20 bottles of Grolsch 275ml
40 cans of carling 440ml
18L Diet Coke
18L Coke
8L Lemonade
8L Diet Lemonade
2L Orange & mango normal concentrate
2L Blackcurrent& apple normal concentrate

Based on wine glass sizes of 150ml, and tumblers of 225ml I have calculated this gives me:
210 glasses of wine
48 bottles of cider
158 bottles/cans of beer
226 glasses of fizzy drinks
Plus however much squash is made with 4L of concentrate.

This is 416 alcohol drinks. (44 adult guests including MrD and me)
Which comes out as 9.5 drinks per person. My mum is probably the biggest drinker invited and I think even she'd struggle to knock back 7-8 pints! (That makes her sound like such an alkie!)
But that is an average - it doesn't take into account that I won't drink any, and my granddad (for example) will probably only have a couple to be sociable.

Right will go and have a look for that post.

MrsDrink

Found it:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=44244046&postcount=13

skylight

How about something for the toast and soft drinks and also label your invites as BYOB?? Use the excuse that its a village hall and wont permit handing out alchol as no licence.

Went to a village hall with all the bunting etc for a lovely 50's style wedding who had a BYOB and a spitroast BBQ, one of the best I've ever been to. And no-one thought BYOB was odd or unusual. What didn't happen was the typical someone have a skin full and kick off!