Providing free drink at your wedding?

Anatidaephobia

Your friends are there to celebrate your day with you, not to scrounge free drinks. If you can afford to treat them to a drink, then that's a lovely gesture but don't feel like you have to do it if you don't have the budget for it.

pickledonionspaceraider

We did free glass of bubbly on arrival, and that was all

74jax

I don't think it's an expected thing at all.

We did do free drinks, but just of sangria, it was on a beach and so thevenue had a sangria fountain . If anyone didn't like that or wanted anything else they could go to the bar.

Evil_Olive

We did a free welcome Pimms and a glass of bubbly for the toast (we supplied our own as our ceremony venue was DIY) but had a paying bar at the reception venue. We did make sure our venue charged normal pub prices though - we made that one of our criteria when looking for venues.

It's not normal to have a free bar nowadays in my experience.

I too remember 1980s weddings with free bars but there wasn't such a gouging wedding 'industry' then - a lot of places just hired the space and you could supply your own or just had a normal priced bar. Plus the percentage of tax on drink has gone up massively since then. It's just not so possible nowadays unless you've got pots of money......

Turtle

catkins wrote: »

The first wedding I ever went to when guests had to pay was in Lincolnshire in about 1990 and I remember thinking how tight they were.

I've been to one wedding where the drinks were free and I thought it was extremely generous.

If I had friends that thought I was tight for not giving out free booze they wouldn't be 'friends' for much longer.

CoconutJay

We're providing sparkling wine straight after the ceremony and for the toasts and wine with food plus gin cocktails on arrival to the reception.
Sounds expensive but it's all courtesy of a booze run to France so it's actually super cheap.
We've also requested that guests "bring a bottle" like they would to any party since we're celebrating in my Uncle's garden and therefore there's no cash bar.
Cheaper for everyone that way!

bowledover81

At our wedding we provided a toast, a welcome drink and half a bottle of wine per adult.

benjus

I got married about 18 months ago - we specifically looked for a venue where we could provide our own drinks. Did a day trip to France for the wine, brought Limoncello back from a holiday in Italy, and carefully watched for supermarket special offers for everything else. In the end we had a reception with champagne or bellinis, then Pimm's or beer, then wine with the meal, limoncello after the meal, champagne toast, then a bar with a limited range of spirits and mixers, plus the leftovers from everything else.

Don't remember what we spent per head, but it was certainly a lot less than if the venue had provided it.

pelirocco

If you are having a reception at a hotel , then it would be far too expensive to have a free bar , my husband put £500 over the bar at my sons wedding on the way to going to our room . We hadn't even got to the room before we got the call that all the money had gone , unfortunatly people take the mickey sometimes .

Gloomendoom

That is why we were able to afford it, we didn't have the reception in an hotel. There is a lot to be said for DIY wedding.

It's hard work though. It took a week for us and my wife's family to set everything up and two days to clear up afterwards.