BYO Venues

ecrowe1218

I am throwing a bunch of ideas around with my FI and contacting quite a few vendors. Our wedding isn't for some time now but we need that time to save./

Anyways, a quite of few vendors and people have told me that stay within my tight budget that a BYO would probably be best. I could get the alcohol at a cheaper price than if I had to pay the hall for an open bar. My FI is completely against this. He doesn't want to worry about carrying anything out after the reception. My concern is staying within our budget.

My question to you ladies is  - Have any of you had a BYO venue, is it actually cheaper to provide your own alcohol? How was the end of the reception, did you have a lot to carry out.

The vendors that i have contacted said they would handle the pick up & delivery of unopened bottles but I would be responsible for the open bottles.

vanityink

Have any of you had a BYO venue, is it actually cheaper to provide your own alcohol?
Yes, and definitely. We had no mark-up on liquor that way and could get it cheap in bulk from a county store.

How was the end of the reception, did you have a lot to carry out?
We had a fair amount left over (mainly because I was paranoid about running out) but it wasn't a huge deal. My aunt had already offered to hold on to any gifts people brought to the ceremony/reception since we weren't going home after the ceremony. Some of the groomsmen helped put the bottles in her car, and she held onto them until we were back from the honeymoon (you can always get bottles with screw-off caps or just have cork stoppers). Since you're probably going through each bottle before opening a new one, there really shouldn't be that many open bottles anyway (we had one or two).

lyndausvi

We brought in our own alcohol.   We had 2 bars filled with top shelf liquor.   It saved us a lot of money.  We were able to take back anything we didn't open.  The venue boxed up all the open bottles.  We loaded it up in the trolley and took it back to house.  

We had help from family and friends.

Sue-n-Kevin

We had a venue where we supplied our own food & alcohol. I used a DOC (Day of coordinator) just for the wedding day to set up all my DIY stuff, make sure everything ran smoothly. I would have paid for her anyway regardless of the alcohol issue because of all the DIY stuff.

She and the bartender we hired (family of the DJ, and bonded/insured) packed up all the wine into boxes and a family member took it home. We only had beer & wine and a signature drink, the beer was in a keg the bartender took with them. We just used the wine for our own personal consumption after the wedding, didn't return anything.

MyNameIsNot

I wish we could have found a BYO venue that would have worked for us.  It would have saved us a ton.  Our venue staff loaded up my dad's trunk with decoration items and gifts at the end of the night, so I'm sure they would have packed up food as well. 

My sister is getting married this year and is using a BYOB place.  She has a good friend that is a liquor distributor, so she's getting the booze for a song.  Her venue said they would pack everything up into boxes and we could come pick it up the next morning.