No. Fucking. Cash. Bar. I'll die 1,000 times on that hill.
FI agreed with me that cash bars are tacky and we will not have one. Then FI mentions the other day that he now thinks we should do beer and wine for free and then charge for liquor. NO. I love his input on wedding stuff and we've made every decision together so far. If he disagrees with something I like, we compromise or just change it to something we both like (cuz he has similar taste to mine so we pretty much always agree). But for this one thing I put my foot down. No. And I explained why, again. His concern was that people would get too drunk, and he said his side wouldn't think a cash bar was rude because some of them are "hillbillies" (his word). Ok, but I would think it was rude. And it's not our job to babysit adults. We're providing safe transportation for them, so if they get too drunk it's their problem, and our licensed experienced bartenders know to cut people off if they've been clearly over served. (I used to be a bartender. In this state it's actually a class C felony to NOT cut someone off if they've clearly had too much and then you lose your bartending license).
I would honestly be humiliated to have a cash bar at my wedding. My grandmother was the etiquette queen and deeply instilled it in me, so I have proper hosting in my blood. Sorrynotsorry.
I even had to remind him of the wedding we went to last fall; cash bar and we didn't expect it. I was embarrassed to have to go back to the table and dig through my purse for money and I was annoyed and found it rude (a lot of stuff at this wedding was very rude like a huge gap, having to get up from our table before we were finished eating because they needed to make space for the dance floor, etc). FI's best friend and his girlfriend also found it very rude, and his girlfriend actually had a flask and mini liquor bottles in her purse for just such an emergency. It was not a fun wedding, we did not have a good time, and most of the guests left right after the first dance, including us. If we have to pay for our drinks, we'll go drink them at the hotel bar where we can actually enjoy ourselves. FI finally saw the light and said fine, no cash bar. But it wasn't over yet.
We then go to his parents' house the next day (which was this Saturday) and his sister and her husband were there. Usually we don't talk about wedding stuff just cuz who wants to do that? It gets boring. But that was the topic of the night for some reason. And even though FI's parents are not paying for the bar AT ALL, they were stuck on that topic. His dad thinks it's totally unreasonable to NOT do a cash bar, because, and I quote, "It's going to cost you at least $10,000." He's never planned a wedding and never paid for a bar, so he pulled this number out of nowhere. We actually had to go online to show him the national average for open bars at weddings, and the average in our part of the country ($3,500) and because our guest list is smaller, our bar service estimated the total cost of our bar to be around $2,000 to $3,000. It's my wedding, I'm paying for the damn bar, I want an open bar, I fucking refuse to be rude to my guests, so back off.
His sister then chimes in and says we should do what she did; open bar for the first hour and then cash bar the rest of the night. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. (And for the record, we should always do what she did. She's one of those Perfect People that has never made a mistake).
FI's family is awesome. I usually have such a great time with them. They've been pretty hands-off with our wedding stuff because they don't want to "annoy us" as they say, but they've offered support. And his sister has given me some great advice on stuff. But I just found this to be so extremely annoying, and I was actually really surprised that they thought cash bars were fine, and better than open bars.
Obviously their opinion isn't a big deal here because they aren't paying for it, so they don't get a say. I have no idea why they got so stuck on the topic. I kept trying to change the subject but it didn't work, so I just had to pretend not to be super annoyed and listen to them harp on how we need to do a cash bar. Just had to get this off my chest so that if it comes up again, I'll have gotten all my previous annoyance out of my system and won't accidentally say something bad. But damn. This is the one thing that I will NOT budge on. And it's the one thing they chose to focus on.