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Providing the liquor....

leggwilliamsleggwilliams
2500 Comments Combo Breaker
in Minnesota-Minneapolis and St. Paul
My reception venue let's us bring in our own liquor (which, of course, I'm very excited about!) however their policy is to only allow an open bar. You can give away liquor, but aren't allowed to sell it. I know we can save money by buying our alcohol wholesale, but I have no idea how much to budget for this. Has anyone else provided their own alcohol for their wedding? And how much did you end up spending?
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Re: Providing the liquor....

  • els8383els8383
    10 Comments
    edited December 2011
    We're doing exactly that - getting all of our booze from a liquor store and having an open bar per our venue's rules. we didn't initially want to have a full open bar, but it's going to be so much cheaper than if we had wanted to pay for, say, wine & beer at normal wedding prices (which are way jacked up). As far as budget, I can't quite remember off the top of my head but I think we're paying somewhere between $1,000 & $1,500 for an open bar all night for 250 people. We're not having a full bar, mainly wine & beer and some liquor, but it will still be a wide selection, and I think our guests will be just fine with it. Let me know if you'd like a better idea of what we're paying...I can dig up our estimate and give you more exact numbers.
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  • leggwilliamsleggwilliams
    2500 Comments Combo Breaker
    edited December 2011
    That would be so helpful! I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to this! $1000 to $1500 doesn't seem so bad, I was nervous since I had no idea what I'm getting myself in to. Did you have someone help you buy the alcohol, or how did you know how much of everything to get?
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  • forreste01forreste01
    10 Comments
    edited December 2011
    We have the same situation and are budgeting about $1,500 for beer and wine for 175.  It all depends on the details.  Are your guests big drinkers?  All over 21?  How late do you have the venue? Are you doing high-end wines and beer in bottles or kegs and two-buck-chuck?  I think at the cheap end for a few kegs and a table wine you could get away with a few hundred. We're doing mid-priced local wines and bottled local beers (and maybe a keg or two for backup because we don't have a time limit on the venue and our guests lean toward the younger side).
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  • els8383els8383
    10 Comments
    edited December 2011
    The coordinator at our venue sat down with us and helped us come up with our order.  We're doing three kegs, a couple of bottles each of vodka, gin, whiskey, and light and dark rum, and I forget how much wine.  But it averaged out to about $7 per person, if I remember right.  I can give you more exact numbers later tonight (it's on my home computer).
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  • littlemissfliplittlemissflip
    100 Comments
    edited December 2011
    Hm... I feel like we spent ~$1200 or so.  We bought 1-2 cases each of 5 nice wines and champagne, a keg of Bell's Oberon, plus a few 12-packs of other decent beers.  We purposely purchased way more than we would actually need, because we didn't want to run out, and because we didn't mind have leftovers.  We only had about 100 come to our wedding, so we had nearly half of the wine leftover... we proceeded to enjoy our leftover wedding wine (and give it away as gifts) for another 6 months after the wedding--it was great!If you'd rather save the money, some liquor stores will allow you to return unopened bottles after the wedding. (Our wine shop did, but we preferred to just drink it, since we bought it at discount.)Also, most liquor stores will give you a discount for buying cases.  Oh, and our venue provided us a guidesheet for recommended amounts to buy, so that was a helpful starting point.
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  • schnabieschnabie
    First Comment
    edited December 2011
    I'm not sure where I found this, but it might be helpful: Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Beer and Wine Serving Amounts How many people Bottles of wine Servings of wine Cases of beer Servings of beer 0-50 18 78 3 72 51-75 30 125 4.5 108 76-100 42 168 5.5 132 101-150 66 264 8.5 204 151-200 84 336 11 264 201-280 108 432 17 408 One 1/4 bubble keg can substitute 3 cases of beer. Check with your facility to see if kegs are allowed. Always check to see if you need a banquet permit, a licensed bartender or limited liability event in
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  • flower_loverflower_lover member
    Sixth Anniversary 100 Comments
    edited December 2011
    There are lots of online calculators (like the one the PP posted) that can help you figure out how much alcohol to purchase. A few additional tips:1. Remember to subtract children and others who won't drink when you're calculating the average number of drinks per person. 2. We took an empty wine bottle and champagne bottle, filled them with water, and then measured how many drinks were in each bottle by filling wine/champagne glasses with water. With those figures, we calculated how much wine/champagne to buy. You could do this with hard liquor too.3. Like littlemissflip said, many places will let you return unopened wine/beer. 4. I highly recommend Surdyk's as a vendor. They have a wine sale and a separate liquor sale once a season, and the savings are great. They also let you return unopened items. www.surdyks.com. Prices are great if you shop during the sale! If you've never been  there, avoid going on a Saturday during the sale, it's packed!
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  • takeela44takeela44
    10 Comments
    edited December 2011
    We are in the process of figuring this out as well! My sister got married last summer and they were able to bring in their own liquor, they had around 250 people and spent about $500. They had four kegs, 10 bottles of rum, 10 whiskey, a case of asti, 4 vodkas, home made wine and I'm sure a few more I can't think of! Not a bad price at all!!
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  • dancegirl731dancegirl731
    10 Comments
    edited December 2011
    Just an idea for the wine.  We bought 100 bottles for $4 wine from trader joes for our wedding.  I know some of you may cringe but I did a taste test with relatives and everyone loved it!!  I am a big winey so I tested a bunch of bottles and found a really good red and a white that I loved.  So great that you can bring in your own alcohol!  Our reception site is still charging $20 a bottle for corking fee!!  That is over $2000 just for opening the bottles!!  Uggh!  It makes me sick!!  And bringing our own wine in is still cheaper!!  So you are gettng a great deal how ever you end up!!  HTH!!
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  • drdifabiodrdifabio member
    Seventh Anniversary 2500 Comments
    edited December 2011
    One of my friends owns a liquor store in the Shoreview/North Oaks area and he is doing our liquor for us. We are just going to do beer, wine and champagne to save some money. He knows his stuff so we are letting him choose brands - they also do a lot of weddings so know how much to provide base on guest count and hours needed. I just told him that we are having around 175 guests and need to entertain for about 5 hours (with a cocktail hour in there) and he quoted us between $500 and $700.Let me know if you would like his info and I can send it along (drdifabio at yahoo)!
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