We are super fortunate that at our venue we can provide our own booze and hire whatever (licensed) bartenders we want. I know that there are a bunch of online calculating tools to figure out how much booze to buy for your wedding. The trouble is, I look through the calculators and they give me pretty different answers. I'm comfortable with the math of planning for one drink per guest per hour. That seems pretty uniform across the board. My current working figure is that we will have 120 guests (including us of course), so that would be 480 drinks. It seems like most calculations tell me I will need 54 - 60 bottles of wine (we will have a red and a white).
Beer wise some calculators have said as few as 72 servings or as many as 150. That's a pretty crazy range. We would probably do 2/3s lighter basic beer (like miller light) and 1/3 darker beer.
Liquor wise the numbers are wonky too. I have seen anywhere from 8 750 ml bottles to 15 liter bottles. Ummm...
One of the things we'd really like to do is have a whiskey bar. The options are evolving but I'd say we'd have 4 varieties of whiskey/bourbon available and make sure the bartenders know how to make several of our favorite drinks, including old fashions. My original thought was to have four 750 ml bottles of each choice available (or the equivalent) but that seems like it would be way way too much given the calculators. We would also have at least one 1 liter of scotch and probably 3 liters of Bombay Sapphire gin. We are not vodka drinkers but it probably would make sense to have 1.5 liters of vodka I think.
We also will buy some kind of champagne-like thing. (Probably a cava). I don't think we would do a specific champagne toast, just have people toast with what they are drinking, so my plan would be to get maybe just 24 bottles of that and have that available as well as a champagne cocktail.
Well that was very long winded. My questions are:
1. What ratio of red to white wine are you using?
2. If you have already had your wedding (or thrown a big party), what ratios of beer, wine and liquor did you use?
3. Do you think having significantly more whiskey than other liquor will be a problem? We are in the south and most people we know either prefer it or would at least have one whiskey cocktail. But it's hard for me to gauge whether that will be true across the board.