Drink Calculator

kjerl

Our caterer doesn't provide alcohol, which means we will need to provide it ourselves. Of course, I realize the amounts will depend on the number of hours, types of beverages and types of drinkers. Just wondering if  anyone has some good references on how to figure out  amounts? The last thing we want to do is run short. 

mcskatcat

Are you having some sort of bartender?  They should be able to provide that info for you.  Our venue also didn't come with a bartender, so we had to hire a separate service for that and we worked out a package that fit our needs.  If you are purchasing the alcohol, then you should have someone making it and they should have an idea of what all you'll need to buy for X amount of guests.  

gurrlballa10

Basic formula (worked really well for us). 

# of guests x # hours=# of drinks

Then to figure out how much of each, take your crowd into consideration.  We only had beer and wine and the majority are beer drinkers, so we did # of drinks x .7 (70%) for beer and # of drinks x .3 (30%) for wine.  Then divided that by how many are in a case.

lconoran

I just found this nifty tool on evite. Haven't used it myself

http://evite.myway.com/pages/party/drink-calculator.jsp

LeiselEB

I would use one of the online drink calculators, but add more than they recommend. See if you can purchase from a store that will let you return unopened bottles if you have extras. I'd rather have more than less, ya know?

aragx6

And FWIW, the fewer types of drinks you try to have the easier this will be. Pick one or two beers and a white and red wine (or maybe 2 red, 2 white) -- you'll make your brain spin if you try to get all complicated.