DIY wedding + alcohol

RashelA

Hello! Hope everyone's wedding plans are going well.

I'm getting married this summer and am planning a very DIY wedding to save on costs. I'm a little stuck on the amount of alcohol we may need.

Our venue allows us to bring our own alcohol, as well as using their small bar if we want to. As we're trying to keep our costs low and still be able to invite everyone we'd like to, we'll be providing guests with a welcome drink and toasting drink (and some soft drinks for kids and non drinkers). For the rest of the drink, we're asking people to either bring a bottle of their favourite tipple, or buy at the bar (very reasonable prices!!)

So, welcome drink, we're thinking Pimms (or the aldi equivalent - I'm told it's much cheaper and not a lot different), and champagne (on offer) for the toasting drinks.

We're inviting around 100 people, and judging by a few different websites, we should expect 75% of people to come.

Question is, would 24 bottles of champagne (75cl) suffice? And how much pimms+lemonade would be needed?

Any help would be much appreciated!

sugarwalsh

You will get 6 x 125ml glasses of champagne from a bottle- so your 24 bottles will give you about 140 glasses. (I think!) I would assume all your guests are coming, but obviously remove the kids and any definite none drinkers. You could get Cava to make it cheaper and round it up to 30 bottles - meaning you wont run out?
not sure about Pimms - you could make a punch which would make it even cheaper?
I would look at Tesco for supplying it - they deliver, often have offers and of course you get points.
MEgan

laura_hoggle

Hi RashelA,

A 75cl bottle of champagne will generally give 6 glasses for toasts, and will fill the glass to 3/4 full (when I've been to weddings I've often seen lots of half drunk discarded glasses of champagne as people often only have a few sips with the toasts.

So 24 would be plenty - in fact 18 bottle, as long as the glasses are filled roughly 3/4 full, should do around 100 glasses.

I'm sure you probably know this but I'm pretty sure the big supermarkets (I've seen it in Tesco before and I think it's a current offer) normally give 5% discount when you buy 6 bottles or more of wine or champagne. The offers on the Tesco wine website can be worth a look as well, and they deliver it!

As for the Pimms, I can't really help there ... I tend to make it by the jug but never really pay attention to how much is going in or what I'm doing, as I'm too eager to drink it!! :rotfl: I've not tried the Aldi equivalent so I'm afraid I can't comment on that!

Hope this helps! xx

k_bagpuss

A wee tip - for a Pimms style drink try Harveys Bristol Cream sherry (or another brand!) and lemonade with loads of fruit (segments of orange, lemon, strawberries, raspberries etc etc. It tastes absolutely fab and is cheaper than Pimms!

double_mummy

from the MSE email

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/cheap-wine-deals

lizd87

Hi there! I'm having the same drinks dilemma and posted on here a few weeks back about champagne and the Aldi 'Pimms'. Tried and tested that, and it def tastes the same, certainly once you've put some fruit,lemonade and mint in it will do! And it's £5 per bottle. It's the same size as the standard bottles of Pimm's you buy.

As for champagne, have a think about how important it is for you to have 'real' champagne.... I was dead set on this, but after some gentle persuasion on here, i've decided i'm going to go for the Aldi proscetto, which has excellent reviews and is much cheaper. Cava's the other option there. Most people won't notice/care anyway!

RashelA

Thanks for your help, Megan! The champagne is on offer, so about £10 a bottle instead of £30
I'll think about changing the pimms for another punch, but the aldi version is something like a fiver a bottle, so not bad, right?

laura_hoggle

We must have been writing our responses at the same time Megan!

I've just found this on the Pimms website, I don't know what the size of the Aldi bottle is but the Pimms site says:

'Mix 1 part PIMM'S* No.1
with 3 parts chilled lemonade;
add some mint, cucumber, orange
and strawberry
When entertaining, fill a jug with 200ml of PIMM'S and top up with lemonade: 5.2 UK units of alcohol, and for a long drink glass use 50ml of PIMM'S and top up with lemonade: 1.3 UK units of alcohol. Makes 4-5 long drinks depending on the size of the glass. Now enjoy the real taste of summer'

So saying a 50ml measure is needed for a long glass of Pimms, a 750ml bottle would do 15 glasses and a 1 litre bottle would do 20. I don't know what size the glasses are at the venue, but assuming the '1 part Pimms, 3 part lemonade, it would be 150ml lemonade, so a standard 2litre bottle would get around 13 glasses.

So 5 bottles of 1litre or 7 bottles of 75cl would do around 100 people, along with around 8 bottles of lemonade. However I have found that when I've been to weddings people tend to go back for seconds (or thirds!) with the welcome drinks, so I'd probably be tempted to double that number, depending on how long it is between getting to the venue and serving dinner.

RashelA

Thank you to everyone else too!!

RashelA

Wow, thanks for the calculations, Laura!!

RashelA

The OH has quite keen on champagne, and what with it being on a good offer, I'd like to go with that one

So I'm calculating about £250 on the champagne, and £50 if we go for aldi version of pimms+lemonade+fruit etc.